


here at the end of all things

by remy (iamremy)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (but it's an OC), Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety Attacks, Canon-Typical Violence, Codependent Winchesters (Supernatural), Dark Dean Winchester, Dubious Morality, Gen, Genderqueer Character, Hopeful Ending, Hurt Sam Winchester, Implied/Referenced Torture, Minor Character Death, Minor Original Character(s), Nightmares, Platonic Bed Sharing, Platonic Cuddling, Protective Benny Lafitte, Protective Castiel (Supernatural), Protective Dean Winchester, Protective Mary Winchester, SPN Dystopia Bang 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 02:51:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 40,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19416949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamremy/pseuds/remy
Summary: AU from Season 12 onwards. The British Men of Letters win in the USA, and slowly manage to establish their bases and authority over the whole country. They also capture Sam Winchester and keep him prisoner for eleven months, experimenting on him regularly before wiping his memories so that he has no idea what has been done to him.Even after Dean rescues him and they begin planning to get revenge once and for all, the niggling doubt at the back of Sam's head remains -- what did they do to him? Why won't his anxiety get better? And what is it that he's missing?





	here at the end of all things

**Author's Note:**

> i enjoyed writing IMMENSELY for this challenge. i loved the premise itself, and my mind was instantly overrun with fic ideas -- and that rarely happens anymore lmao -- and this one is the winner! love me some dystopian future fics, mmmMMMM
> 
> before i begin, though, i want to thank my artist Sunny, who is absolutely PHENOMENAL. in addition to being INSANELY TALENTED and possessing the ability to read my mind over thousands of miles, she is also a warm, friendly and all-around excellent person, just like her name. it's been so amazing working with you!
> 
> i also want to thank my beta Sanj, and our wife Pooj, for their unending support, their reassurances that i can do this in time, and their forever unwavering faith in me (no idea why, but i love you guys so much!). Sanj in particular deserves an award for beta-ing the fic and fixing the many, many, MANY errors in it, so you've got her to thank for that! and of course, all remaining errors are my own.
> 
> finally - a great thank you to the mods, for this challenge! i definitely enjoyed writing it and i would love to see it return next year too!
> 
> [you can find the art post here — please show Sunny your appreciation of her wonderful art!](https://blueeyesandpie.tumblr.com/post/185949575300/dont-worrry-it-hurt-me-more-than-it-hurt-him)

Sam’s more exhausted than usual when they finally lock him back up in his room; his eyes seem to be slipping shut no matter how hard he tries to keep them open, and his senses seem dulled, like everything is reaching him through a drugged haze. The everpresent ache in his bones seems worse today, like it’s permeating deep into his soul somehow, and he has no idea how to explain it, and the sharp pain in his heart.

“Don’t you look pretty today,” greets his roommate as the guard shoves Sam into his room and slides the door shut. The  _ click _ a second later indicates it’s locked, and Sam’s stuck here until the next time they decide to let him have a little outing.

Too tired to bother responding verbally, Sam just flips Benny off before letting himself fall into his bed. It’s hard enough that thinking it’s literally made out of rocks wouldn’t be too far-fetched, the single pillow and white hospitalesque sheets carrying the faded tint of sterility and disease, and yet in this moment it feels like the world’s softest feather bed to Sam.

“Clever,” says Benny with a snort. He’s on the other bed, barely a foot away from Sam’s, stretched out on top of the covers with his back to the headboard and his legs stretched out in front of him. Infuriatingly, he looks like he always has, if just a bit shabbier. Like the past few months – God, almost a year, thinks Sam with a dull jolt – have left no mark on him.

Sam knows that’s not true, though. Benny doesn’t get to leave the room as much as Sam does, but it’s still a significantly frequent occurrence. Whatever they’re doing to him is not going to show on the outside like it does with Sam – it’s on the inside, where only Benny knows the real extent, but he’s not telling and anyway, Sam’s not asking.

A few minutes pass by in silence. Despite the exhaustion, Sam’s having trouble dropping off to sleep, a fact that’s irritating him exponentially with each passing minute. Who knows when he’s going to have to wake up again, it’s logical to grab a few hours of sleep while he  _ can _ , but his body is refusing to cooperate.

“So what did they do to you today?” Benny asks eventually,  somehow  managing to sound nonchalant. “You look deader than usual.”

Sam takes a moment to rack his brains, though he knows there’s no point. He never remembers. “I don’t know,” he says in the end, sighing in some combination of frustration and fatigue. “How long was I gone?”

Benny shrugs. “About, I dunno, six, seven hours? I guess?” There’s no way to tell time in this sterile white room, where there’s no clock and the lights never go out, and there’s no way to tell if it’s day or night, if it’s been minutes or hours or days.

“Great,” Sam mumbles, turning his face so he can press it into his pillow. He’s still dressed in his ragged white pajama pants and shirt, both reeking of old blood and the rank stench of fear and pain. His uncomfortable shoes are still on too, a size too small for his feet, toes cramped and heels aching; but he can’t make himself move, can’t make himself kick off his shoes and shuffle under the sheets and be comfortable.

Or as comfortable as he can be, considering the shitty bed and its shitty pillow and shitty sheets.

“Seriously, though,” Benny says after a few moments, and it’s the absence of nonchalance in his tone that makes Sam turn his head to look at him, heart rate spiking a little. Benny’s ageless face is expressionless, hands clenched in his lap, and that more than anything gives away his concern. And shit, if Benny’s concerned then Sam really must look like shit.

“What?” he asks.

“You look…” Benny’s mouth twists. “It’s the longest they’ve had you,” he says, changing tack suddenly. “And I thought – well.” He grimaces. “I thought maybe, this time, you ain’t coming back.”

Sam considers this, turns Benny’s words over in his mind, tries to make sense of the fact that this is the first time in their stay here that Benny has expressed any kind of emotion that wasn’t anger, resignation, or biting sarcasm. If Benny’s emoting, he must really have been worried.

He doesn’t know how to respond, though. It has been so long that anyone has shown any kind of concern for him, and it reminds him suddenly, and with painful vividness, of his brother, of Dean’s voice and his touch when he was worried about Sam, of his tendency to hover and smother and helicopter around Sam until he was absolutely sure Sam wasn’t going to slip away from him. The memory makes his heart clench, the sharp pain in it tightening like a vice around his chest – it’s been so long since he’s let himself think of Dean, let himself have the luxury of drawing comfort from his memories of his brother – and Sam’s not aware he’s made any sound, not until Benny’s posture loosens and he makes an aborted movement towards Sam.

“Sorry,” Sam gasps out, automatically flinching backwards, away from Benny. “Sorry, I—”

Benny’s expression falls back into something unreadable, and his fists clench again before he deliberately opens them, places his hands palm down on his knees to grip at the fabric there instead. “It’s fine,” he says, voice tightly controlled. “It’s all right.”

A tear drips out of the corner of Sam’s eye and runs down the side of his face for a second before disappearing into the scratchy cotton of the pillowcase. That’s surprising too – Sam’s so dehydrated it hurts when he speaks because his mouth  is drier than the Sahara in summer, and yet  he’s  still able to produce tears.

Benny clears his throat awkwardly, turns away to give Sam the illusion of privacy since the small ten by ten room won’t allow for the actual thing itself. It’s a useless gesture – Benny’s heightened senses mean he can smell the tears, the distress coming off Sam in waves, but the fact that he pretends otherwise means something, and Sam appreciates it. Worse than crying like a little kid who misses his big brother is having someone to witness it, someone he doesn’t particularly even like that much.

That’s not true anymore, though, not really, Sam thinks as he tries to compose himself. It was only just that one tear, his body too tired for more, but it’s the emotional toll that’s heavier than anything else, because now that he’s let himself think of Dean, he can’t stop, not even as he tries to distract himself with stark reminders of the here and now, of the rough sensation of the sheets on his skin, the sterile smell to the room, Benny’s hulking presence barely three feet from him.

But yeah. It’s not true that he doesn’t like Benny, even if whatever mutual respect they have now has only been borne of going through the same shit at the same time and in close proximity to each other. Also, Benny’s the only thing from his old life that he has now, and he can’t afford to not like him, he can’t afford to hold on to old grudges and bad blood, not when Benny’s all he has now.

“I’m okay,” he says eventually, once he’s sure he can keep the tremor out of his voice. “I’m fine.”

“Yeah,” says Benny shortly. “Yeah, okay. Just…” He sighs, the sound strange because Sam’s never heard it before. “Look, Sam. I know you don’t like me. But… I’m used to you now, I guess. And I don’t want – I don’t want to one day come back to this room, and find you ain’t here anymore, and you ain’t comin’ back.”

“Oh.” Sam blinks, surprised. He’s not really sure what to say, other than it’s the nicest thing Benny’s ever said to him – the nicest thing he’s heard since he was taken, period. For a short moment he’s actually kind of glad he can’t produce any more tears, because this unexpected statement from Benny has his throat closing up, eyes feeling embarrassingly watery even though nothing comes out, thankfully.

“Thank you,” he says in the end. “I… would not want you to die, either.”

Benny snorts, and then grins. “Getting’ really touchy-feely there, huh.”

“Really in touch with my emotions,” Sam agrees with a short laugh. “Also, you started it.”

“In my defense, I really did think you weren’t comin’ back,” Benny says. “And then when you do, you look like…” He waves a hand at Sam, as if encompassing his whole being with that one gesture. “Well, like you spent ‘bout a decade down in Purgatory.”

“Or centuries in hell,” Sam finishes wryly.

“Or that,” Benny agrees. “You look like slow-roasted crap, is my point. More than usual.”

“Don’t sugarcoat it or anything,” Sam says.

Benny rolls his eyes and turns away, crossing his arms over his chest again. It’s a poor attempt to hide his frustration, his helplessness, and his anger at the fact that Sam just doesn’t seem to care about himself. Something about it is so utterly reminiscent of Dean that Sam can’t help but soften, even as the reminder of his brother brings back the pain in his chest anew.

“Look,” he says, the word coming out on a sigh. “Benny.” He waits till the vampire is looking at him, expression hilariously mulish. “I’m probably going to die here,” Sam says, blunt, and Benny’s mouth falls open to argue. “No, hear me out,” he says, and Benny shuts up, mutinous. “I’m probably going to die here, Benny, and there isn’t anything anyone can do about it. I don’t know what they’re doing to me, but I know that if the experiments don’t kill me, then  _ they _ will once they’ve decided I’m no longer useful. And… and at this point, I just… can’t care, you know?”

“How?” demands Benny.

“I’m tired,” Sam answers simply. “I’m just tired of fighting, Benny. There’s no point to it, anyway. All I can do now is wait to die.”

“Ain’t that a load of shit,” Benny declares. “What’s wrong with you, Sam? How can you just give up, just like that?”

“Well, what else can I do?” Sam asks. The words come out tired rather than argumentative as he’d hoped, but oh well. He’s too exhausted for anything else, anyway, and not for the first time he wishes he could just close his eyes and sleep. “I can’t fight anymore, Benny. I’ve tried, and it’s never worked, and they know to expect it now, so what’s the point? What am I supposed to live for?”

“Dean!” Benny bursts out angrily. Then he seems to realize he’s too loud, and lowers his voice, though the amount of anger in it stays approximately the same. “Your brother, Sam! He’s probably out there, still lookin’ for you, hopin’ you’re alive so he can come bust you out, and you’re what, just givin’ up? Just lettin’ go? What, you want him to finally haul ass all the way here and find your corpse?”

And yeah, there go all of Sam’s efforts not to think about Dean, right out the window – metaphorical, because this room does not have any. Sam is suddenly faced with the mental image that Benny’s words conjure up, right at the forefront of his brain – Dean, coming for him, finding nothing but…nothing. No record of Sam, no sign of him, like he never existed. Dean, thinking Sam’s just not here, and going off to search elsewhere, not the foggiest idea that Sam’s dead and gone, that he’s searching in vain, that he’ll never find anything—

“Breathe, Sam,” demands Benny, and Sam comes to himself, realizes he’s gasping for breath, one hand clawing at his heart, the other clutching a handful of bedsheet, grip so tight his knuckles are white.

“Sorry,” he gasps out, forces himself to focus on Benny, to ground himself in the here and now, the shitty sheets and sterile smell and the vampire he’s sharing a room with. “Sorry, I—”

“I shouldn’t have brought Dean up like that,” Benny says gruffly once Sam’s able to breathe a bit slower, hand still held over his heart, feeling his pulse stutter.

Sam doesn’t reply, just inhales, as deep as he can, holds it and lets it out when he can’t keep it in any longer. He does it again, and again, and one more time, pretends he can’t feel Benny’s eyes on him, Benny’s laser-focus on his heartbeat that has nothing to do with his blood, and when he’s finally calmed down enough to realize the pain in his chest is sharper than ever, bones aching, he sighs.  He  rubs his heart through his shirt, and lets his hand fall. This is not physical pain, and a physical gesture will not fix it. This is something deeper, something more primal, right at the core of him where even he can’t tell what resides.

Suddenly hyper aware of his shoes on his feet, Sam struggles into an upright position, forces his trembling fingers to cooperate long enough to make quick work of the laces, before kicking his shoes off and letting them fall at the foot of his bed. His toes hurt from being shut tight all day, and he stretches them, relishing in the ache of his joints as he wriggles them.

“Sam,” Benny tries again. “Sammy.”

“Don’t,” Sam says abruptly, harshly. “Don’t, Benny. Not that.”

“Sorry,” Benny says, and subsides into silence. He keeps his eyes on Sam, though, follows every movement as Sam struggles underneath the thin sheet masquerading as a blanket, and lets his head fall back on the bag of bricks these motherfuckers think is a pillow.

“I’m gonna try to get some sleep now,” he says finally, once he’s settled, back to Benny. And in a previous life he’d never do that, never let his guard down around a vampire, let alone put his back to one, but this is not that life, and he is no longer that person, and neither is Benny.

“Okay,” says Benny. “You do that.”

Sam doesn’t bother replying, just pulls the sheets up and over his head in an attempt to block out as much of the harsh white fluorescent lights as possible, and closes his eyes.

He dreams of home, of Dean, of the Impala and the bunker and Dean’s room, of the two of them out in a field in the middle of the night, shoulders pressed together and faces upturned towards the starry skies. He dreams of salt and silver, of his brother by his side, of gun oil and bloody knives, and the two of them against the world, because even if they never had anything else they always had each other.

He dreams of their life together, of allowing himself to finally feel happy, and then he dreams of being taken, ripped from his home as he watched it burn. He calls out for his brother and hears nothing but the screaming of flames, and he dreams of pain, of blood, and black eyes, and pain, pain,  _ pain _ .

“I wonder,” says the British dude in the lab coat, tone casual even as he looks at Sam with a wild kind of hunger in his eyes. “I wonder what would happen if a vampire were to feed on demon blood.”

“Get fucked,” Benny tells him.

Sam’s back in whatever lab they take him to when they feel like using him as a guinea pig, strapped down to a cold metal table and wondering how many shitty B-movies his captors have watched and taken inspiration from. The only difference is that now, Benny’s with him too, strapped down in a similar way and snarling and cursing, a wild animal cornered.

“Wrong answer,” the asshole in the lab coat says. “Well, we’ll find out, I suppose.”

Sam turns his head, stomach twisting in horror as he sees what Dr. Douchebag is holding. He can smell the demon blood even from all the way across the room, the scent tantalizing even now, even despite everything, and Sam’s guts revolt at it, at the shameful curl of  _ need _ he feels deep in his belly. Years and years and years and he will never ever be free of this, he will never be able to cut out the worst part of himself, everything that makes him worse than anything he’ll ever hunt.

“No,” he says, and then louder when the asshole in the lab coat doesn’t look up. “ _ No _ . I won’t, I won’t, you can’t make me—” 

“Do you want to test that?” Dr. Motherfucker’s thin lips twist in a cruel grin, glasses sliding a little down his long nose. Thready black hair on an almost bald scalp, and a deadness to his eyes – he could almost be Alastair reborn, and the thought is  _ terrifying _ .

“What?” Benny sounds confused. “Sam, what—”

“He’s not gonna make you drink that,” Sam says, voice sticking in his throat, heart pounding overwhelmingly loud in his ears. “Demon blood directly is fatal to vampires, but—”

“But not to you, is it, Sam?” Discount Alastair asks with a nasty grin. “And once it’s been mixed in with  _ your _ blood, it’ll be safe for your friend here.”

“No,” Benny says immediately, looking sickened. “I’m not doin’ it, you piece of shit, you can go fuck yourself—”

“What about this whole situation makes you think you’re getting a choice here?” the piece of shit in question asks as he makes his way over with the vial, looking vaguely irritated by all the protesting now. “You’re both in my power now, you’re doing whatever I want you to. You won’t even remember any of this afterwards. Isn’t that right, Sam?”

This close the scent of it is overpowering; Sam closes his eyes, forces himself to take shallow breaths so he can’t smell it, lips pressed close together so tightly his jaw is beginning to ache. Every single cell in his body is railing against it, and yet begging for it, and he wants to scream, to fight and struggle and make life hell for his captor—

Cold nitrile fingers on his jaw, thumbs pressing into the joints, and it hurts, it hurts so fucking much but Sam resists, keeps his mouth clamped shut, struggles against his restraints even though he knows there’s no point, that he’ll be forced to give in eventually. Next to him Benny is shouting, cussing and promising retribution, mixed in with helpless curses as his own struggles bear no fruit.

“Come on, Sam, don’t be so difficult,” Discount Alastair says cajolingly, like Sam’s an unruly child refusing to take his medicine, and Sam wants to rip him apart, wants to hurt him like he’s hurting Sam—but then the pressure on his jaw increases, agonizing, and he can’t help it, can’t stop his mouth from being forced open, and the next second, it drips into his mouth, hot and sulfurous and so goddamn  _ good _ it hurts—

Sam thrashes wildly, bucking his body off the table as much as the restraints will allow, but there’s no point now, it’s already all in his mouth, Dr. Asshat’s hand holding his jaw shut now, demanding, “Swallow it, Sam, there’s no point in fighting it, you want it, I know you do—”

And he does, God, but he  _ does,  _ and all he has to do is swallow, all he has to do is let the more primal part of him take over, the part that says that drinking it will give him the strength to escape this place, to fight back and kill everyone who’s doing this to him—

He stops, lets his body falls still, presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth and closes his eyes, swallows even as he feels tears leaking out from under his eyelids, tears he’s still amazed he can produce. He can hear Benny’s cursing getting more vehement, proportional to his helpless rage, can hear him promising to rip out Dr. Bastard’s throat, even as the man himself keeps his hand on Sam’s mouth.

He doesn’t let go until he’s satisfied Sam won’t struggle. Sam opens his eyes only when he no longer feels anything on his face, and looks up to see Discount Alastair’s smug, satisfied, extremely punchable face, just inches above his.

“See, I know you’d come around,” he crows. “I knew you wanted it, that you couldn’t resist it—”

He cuts off abruptly when Sam spits the blood back up in his face, all of it, every last drop. It spatters his face, coating his glasses and dripping down to mar his pristine lab coat. He looks quite comical, standing there spluttering in shock, and Sam can’t help the savage laugh that breaks free of his throat.

“Fuck  _ you _ ,” he rasps out, and grins, well-aware how he must look, bloodstained teeth and lips and red-rimmed eyes. “Fuck you, you piece of shit. Fuck you.”

Besides him, Benny laughs, incredulous and pleased and vindictive.

The shock clears on Dr. Shit’s face, makes way for rage, as he wipes his face with his sleeve and succeeds only in smearing it everywhere. “You son of a bitch,” he hisses, holding the vial by the neck and smashing it on the edge of Sam’s table, fashioning it into a crude yet effective weapon. “You’re going to pay for this—that was our last batch of demon blood—”

Sam musters as much saliva as he can force from his body, and swills it around his mouth to catch the last of the blood, before spitting that out at Discount Alastair as well. It hits him square in the face, splattering against his glasses, and Sam can’t help but laugh again, mirthless, broken glass and gravel in his throat.

“Fuck you,” he repeats, an exhausted broken record. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you—”

Dr. Crapface raises the hand with the shattered vial, and Benny’s laughter cuts off into “No, no, fuck you, no you  _ don’t _ —” but it’s nothing but impotent rage, and Sam’s eyes follow the arc of the vial as it comes down, towards him, glittering under the fluorescent lighting, and he knows this is it, this is it, he’s going to die, but at least his last act was defiance, he didn’t drink it, he  _ didn’t _ —

And then the lights go out.

Sam’s first thought is that he’s dreaming again, but everything feels too real for it to be a dream. Searing heat and ringing ears and something wet and warm and thick on his skin. His eyelids are clamped shut, and the world behind them leaks through anyway, red-hot orange and painful, and something heavy is lying across his body, pressing him down into the metal table which is now hot enough to burn—

Dimly he can hear shouting, someone barking orders, and to his right somewhere Benny is shouting back, words that Sam can’t make sense of. He opens his mouth, tries to speak as well, but all that comes out is his own blood, coating his throat and bubbling out of his mouth, choking him as he tries to make a sound,  _ any  _ sound—

He hears Benny again, and then more voices, and then he feels hands on his skin, callused and gentle, and he’d know that touch anywhere, he’d know him in any world—

He tries to speak again, and all he gets for his efforts is more of his own blood spilling over his lips, and someone shouting in panic somewhere just above him, and everything hurts, everything is fire and blood, and pain, pain,  _ pain _ —

Sam closes his eyes.

Sam opens his eyes.

The room he’s in is dark, and that’s the first sign he has that he’s no longer at the research facility (which is a thinly veiled euphemism for torture and experimentation center). The second would be the bed he’s on, with its soft pillow and warm mattress, and the heavy blanket covering him, a comforting weight on his skin. The third is that he is no longer in pain, instead feeling weightless and floaty, and grateful for the heavy blanket that seems to be anchoring him in place.

He moves his fingers and toes experimentally – they obey, though with no small amount of protests. Next he tries to make out the room he’s in, testing his eyes, his ears, and hearing nothing but the slight ringing in his ears, seeing nothing but vague dark shapes around him. The bed smells earthy, slept in, and comforting, and the pillow still holds faded old notes of musk and sweat, and just a hint of gun oil, and he knows that scent, he knows it intimately—

He reaches out, braces his hands against the bed and forces himself up, ignoring the way his body protests. It’s only when he’s stumbled out of bed and on to his feet that he realizes what’s different – his body, while aching, does not hurt like it constantly did back at the facility, and the pain in his chest has diminished so much it’s barely noticeable.

The floor is cold under his bare feet, stone he thinks, and he takes a slow step and then another, eyes adjusting slowly to the darkness in the room. He hasn’t gone more than a few steps when the door opens and light spills into the room directly in front of him, and a sharp pain flares behind his eyeballs, making him cry out and close his eyes, turning his face away and shielding it with his hands for good measure.

“Sammy?”

His heart stops.

“Sam?”

It starts again, stuttering in his chest, and Sam lets his hands fall from his face, forces his eyes to open, to look past the tears of pain, to  _ see _ —

There is a warm hand on his arm, belonging to the shadowy figure silhouetted in the light coming in from the doorway, and then strong arms wrapped around him, shaky breathing in his ear, a chest pressed to his and a heart beating rabbit-quick under it, and he can smell musk and sweat and gun oil—

“Sammy,” and it’s Dean, it’s  _ Dean _ , he’s alive, he’s alive and he’s here and he came for Sam, he  _ came _ , he saved him, he’s  _ here _ —

There’s a keening sound that it takes Sam a moment to realize is coming from him, his face pressed into Dean’s shoulder, fingers scrabbling for purchase desperately on Dean’s shirt, and Dean’s still holding him so tight, like he’s afraid to let go, like he thinks he’ll lose Sam if he does, and his breath is hitching in his chest, and he’s so solid, and real, and warm, and Sam can’t help it, too overwhelmed to control himself – he burrows his face into Dean’s neck and bursts into tears, throat hurting and stomach too, and his heart in his chest—

“Hey,” Dean says, and his voice is shaking too but he’s trying to keep it steady for Sam, trying to be strong, even as Sam sobs and Dean cries too. “Hey, Sammy, hey, it’s okay, it’s okay—” 

It is, it is, it is, but Sam can’t stop, he can’t, he  _ can’t _ —

Dean maneuvers them both carefully until they’re back at the bed, and he lets Sam collapse against him as he sits, Sam’s tears soaking through his shirt, each harsh sob feeling like it’s tearing open his chest and throat on the way up. And still he can’t stop, can’t bring himself back under control, can’t do anything but hold on to Dean and cry into his neck and let himself be held.

“ _ Sammy _ ,” breathes Dean shakily, and he sounds like his heart is breaking, and Sam’s chest hurts again, but for an entirely different reason now.

“You’re here,” Sam sobs, muffled. “You’re here, you’re here you’re here  _ you’re here _ —”

“Yeah,” says Dean fiercely, and tightens his embrace even more, until his scent surrounds Sam, overwhelms him in the best way possible, reminds him that it’s real, it’s all real, he’s not dreaming and  _ Dean’s here _ . “Yeah Sammy, yeah,” Dean’s saying, lips moving against Sam’s temple, “yeah I’m here, I’m not leaving you, Sam, I’m not, I’m not—”

“You’re here,” Sam repeats one last time, and hiccups, and breathes in Dean’s scent, lets himself feel the warmth of Dean’s skin on his own.

“Yeah, I am,” Dean reassures him, and he’s got one hand in Sam’s hair now, fingers combing through it, nails lightly scratching at his scalp in a way that makes Sam shudder in his arms. “I’m here, Sammy, I’m here, I swear. You’re safe now, they’re not gonna hurt you, no one’s gonna hurt you, you’re _ safe _ .”

“I thought I was gonna die in there,” Sam admits, voice brittle. “I thought—” 

“I’m not lettin’ you leave me that easy,” Dean says with a forced chuckle that sounds more like a sob, and presses his lips to Sam’s forehead. “Y’hear, Sammy? You’re not dying, not on my watch—”

Sam raises his head, looks up at Dean, at whatever he can see of him in the semi-darkness of the room. His brother looks like he always has; thinner maybe, cheekbones and stubble starker against the paleness of his face and the tired green of his eyes – but essentially the  _ same _ , and Sam finds he’s crying again, unabashed at the tears falling down his face, mirrored by the ones on Dean’s.

“I thought I was never gonna see you again,” he whispers, hands gripped tight in Dean’s shirt.

Dean brings his own hands up, frames Sam’s face in them, and leans in to kiss his forehead. “I would never have stopped looking,” he swears. “Never. Woulda searched every last damn building in this country, every corner, every goddamn nook and cranny, and I don’t give a shit how long it would’ve taken—I wasn’t gonna leave you, Sammy. Wasn’t gonna let you go.  _ Never _ ,” he repeats, with a vehemence that rings of unshakeable truth.

“I know,” Sam says, and he does, he always has, even when he doubted it he knew anyway, “I know, I know, Dean, I  _ know _ —”

His voice breaks again, and Dean just smiles at him, soft and infinitely tender, and pulls him closer again until his head is back on Dean’s shoulder, one of Dean’s arms loose around him and the other hand back in his hair again.

“I’m not ever letting you go now,” Dean swears. “Ever. No matter what. All right, Sammy? All right, kiddo?”

And it makes Sam feel all of eight again, running to his brother for consolation after a skinned knee, just a little kid needing his big brother, and instead of railing against the feeling Sam leans into it, into the safety and warmth it conjures up, and for the first time in a very long time, lets himself go, lets himself relax into Dean’s protective embrace, and closes his eyes, feels his heart slowing, his breath coming easier.

“All right,” he mumbles sleepily. “All right, D.”

Dean smiles at the old nickname, and Sam can feel it against his temple, and he lets his fingers loosen a little in Dean’s shirt, lets Dean push him down on the bed until he’s lying down again, and for a moment he can’t feel Dean’s skin on his anymore, and he panics, reaches out wildly – but then in the next moment, Dean’s lying down next to him, pulling him back into his arms, and Sam buries his face in Dean’s chest and grips his shirt again, and lets himself be lulled into sleep by the sound of Dean’s heart beating right under his ear, and the sensation of Dean’s fingers in his hair. 

The second time Sam wakes up, it’s to the warmth of Dean’s arms around him, and the sound of voices right outside the door. He opens his eyes, focuses on his surroundings, and in the meanwhile Dean sleeps on, not stirring, and Sam registers how tired he really must have been. It’s probably the first time since they’ve separated that Dean has been able to sleep well; it’s definitely so for Sam. 

“Lemme see him, I wanna know if he’s all right!”

That’s Benny, Sam realizes, and he doesn’t sound happy. Not one bit at all. 

“He’s resting, you can see him later—” says someone Sam doesn’t recognize. 

“Listen, get the fuck outta my way before I make you—”

And yeah, that won’t end well. Benny sounds like he is three seconds away from breaking down the door, and Sam  _ knows _ if that happens all it will result in is Dean stabbing first, asking questions and panicking later. 

He shifts, pushes at Dean’s chest, whispering his name. “Dean, wake up,” he mutters, trying to extricate himself from his brother’s vice grip as gently as he can. “Dean, there are people outside—”

“Whosit?” Dean mumbles, resisting Sam’s shoving at his chest and wrapping his arm even tighter around Sam’s waist. 

“‘S Benny, and if you don’t lemme up, he’s gonna—” but before Sam can finish, the door is thrown open, bright light falling into the room, and Benny strides in, determined and irritated. 

Immediately Dean is sitting up in bed, and he moves so fast it’s almost a blur, and the next second he’s out of bed and has Benny pinned to the wall, blade held to his throat. It’s an instinctive response, automatic, and Dean is still half-asleep but no less lethal for it. 

Sam sighs. “Dean.”

The sleepy haze clears from Dean’s eyes and he squints at Benny. Sam can see the exact moment his brain clicks online, and apparently so can Benny, because he grins. “Good to see you too, brother.”

Dean’s face breaks into a sunny grin, lighting up his eyes, and he lowers the knife, stepping back to give Benny his space. “You son of a bitch,” he greets happily, and then they’re hugging, manfully clapping each other on the back twice before separating. “You doing okay?” Dean asks, and Benny nods. 

“Yeah, I’m okay,” he replies, and steps out from behind Dean so that he can take a better look at Sam, who’s sitting up in bed and has been watching the entire proceedings with a smile. “And you, Sam? All right?”

“All right,” Sam confirms. 

“Glad to hear it,” Benny says. 

“Yeah,” says Sam. 

There’s an awkward silence — where do they go from here? Their situation has changed; they’re no longer unwilling roommates, so does this mean that their dynamic has changed as well?

Before Sam can think about it too much, Benny says, “Yeah well, you still look like crap,” and just like that, the awkwardness dissipates and Sam finds himself laughing as he flips Benny off. 

“Weird,” mutters Dean, clearly trying to make sense of the unexpected camaraderie between Sam and Benny, but the two of them pay him no mind. Sensing that he’s being ignored, Dean clears his throat loudly and then says, “Okay, I’m starving — Sammy, you up for breakfast?”

As if in response, Sam’s stomach makes an embarrassingly loud noise, and he flushes even as Dean and Benny both grin at him. “Yeah, hell yeah,” he says, and realizes he can’t remember the last time he had a meal that wasn’t some kind of mysterious broth whose constituents he had no desire of knowing. 

“Awesome,” says Dean, holding out a hand, and Sam takes it, letting himself be pulled to his feet.

They emerge from the room into some sort of dormitory area, a narrow hallway lined with doors on both left and right and people emerging from those doors in various states of dressing every now and then. It reminds Sam of his dorm back at Stanford, lifetimes ago, except the people here are older, much more grizzled, much more worn down. They call out greetings to Dean as they pass, and smile encouragingly at Sam and a few even greet him, saying things like “It’s so nice to finally meet you” and “We’re so glad to hear you’re okay.” Sam doesn’t recognize any of them, but Dean knows them all, returning their greetings and talking to them comfortably, keeping one hand on the small of Sam’s back at all times.

The hallway opens into a wider area, hustling and bustling with activity. Sam looks up to see metal beams and walkways, small square windows set high up in the walls and letting in the bare minimum of sunlight, the rest of the light provided by fluorescent strips of light and lamps hanging bare. It looks like the interior of a warehouse of some kind, that’s been converted into a living-space; there’s a mess area to his right and a living area to his left, and in the corner there’s a walled-off space that looks like it might be the bathrooms.

“Dude,” he says, aware of how awed he sounds. “What is this place?”

The smile that dawns on Dean’s face could probably be harnessed for enough energy to power a small country for a year, it’s that bright, and Sam can’t help but respond to it and smile too, even though he has no idea what he’s grinning at. It’s just… been so long since he’s seen Dean’s face, seen him smile, and smile like  _ this _ , innocent and full of childish glee, and Sam wants to see it there permanently, wants it to carve laughter lines around Dean’s mouth and his eyes—

“You’re not gonna believe this,” Dean says, grinning so widely that Sam’s sure a full dental examination can be conducted of his teeth, all of which are on display.

“What?” Sam asks.

“Guess,” Dean sings happily.

“Dude, no, what?” Sam asks again, hitting Dean in the arm even as he laughs.

“You’ve gotta guess,” Dean tells him, irritatingly smug, and God, Sam loves him—

“Knock it off,” Benny says from behind them, and Dean turns to make a face at him.

“You guys are no fun,” he declares. “Sammy, it’s Area 51.”

Just saying the words has the grin back on his face, but Sam’s still not sure he’s heard him right. Automatically he looks around the whole place again, as if expecting a little green man to materialize from the communal bathrooms or the living area, while by his side Dean snorts a laugh.

“Area 51?” Sam finally manages to say, incredulous. “Are you for real?”

“Fuck yeah, Sammy,” Dean says happily. “Can you believe?”

“No,” Sam says. “No, Dean, I cannot, I fucking  _ refuse _ – aliens?  _ Aliens _ ? All that shit was  _ real _ ?”

Benny grins. “What, you can believe in ghosts and vampires and all that stuff, but not aliens?”

“NO,” Sam says, rounding on him. “No, I  _ refuse _ , I’m not having it—” What the fuck. What the  _ fuck _ —

“Sam, relax, I’m just fucking with you,” Dean says, grinning and cuffing the back of Sam’s head playfully, ignoring the glare he receives in response. “No aliens, kiddo, tragically. It was just BS so people wouldn’t look into it too deep. Well, other than the conspiracy nuts.”

“Thank God,” Sam says fervently. “Thank  _ God _ .”

Benny laughs again, while Dean just rolls his eyes. “Killjoy.”

They’re at the mess now. Even though the walk from the room to here has been short, barely five or so minutes, Sam feels a bit winded already. Whatever they gave him earlier to ward off the pain is wearing off now, and he can feel the pain in his chest returning, along with various other aches and hurts all over his body. The most noticeable of these is a sharp throbbing pain in his abdomen, and Sam puts his hand over his belly to find the telltale padding of layers of bandages under the shirt he’s in, one of Dean’s. 

“What happened?” he finally asks, when they sit.

Dean’s smile immediately melts off his face, but Sam doesn’t have time to feel regret over that; his brother is already standing, and saying, “Hey, why don’t I go get us all something to eat, and Benny, you can fill Sam in?”

“Dean,” Sam starts, but Dean just gives him a tight smile that’s more of a grimace, and goes off in search of food.

“What’s going on?” Sam asks immediately, not taking his eyes off his brother’s retreating back.

“So I’m guessin’ you ain’t seen yourself in a mirror yet, huh,” is Benny’s response, and Sam turns to narrow his eyes at him.

“What does that mean?”

“You look like shit,” Benny says bluntly, and this time he sounds like he means it, teasing and ribbing all set aside for now. “Sam, you were half-dead when they brought you here, you barely managed to make it.”

“But what  _ happened _ ?” Sam asks, now with a sinking feeling in his gut. “Last thing I remember is that crazy doctor screaming about how I wasted the last of the demon blood—”

“He woulda killed you,” Benny says quietly. “Sam, he really would have killed you. We got real lucky that Dean and the others came when they did.”

“What others?” questions Sam.

Benny shrugs. “I dunno their names. They’re the ones shut off the power and then blew up the lab, and then they came in, kicked that asshole’s body aside, and tried to get you off that table, but it was too hot. And you were bleeding, because the asshole had damn near gutted you, and no one could do anything because it was too damn hot. I was the one who grabbed you in the end, got you off that table so Dean could carry you out.”

“You – you did?” Sam’s head is swimming as he tries to process all of this, tries to understand what it must have been like for Dean, rushing in to his brother’s rescue only to find him restrained and bleeding, and probably unconscious too on top of everything, and unable to touch him—

“Yeah,” says Benny. “Yeah, I did. Don’t thank me,” he adds. “You’ll never say it, but I know you’d do the same for me.”

Sam just nods, not trusting himself to speak past the lump that’s forming in his throat.

Dean chooses that moment to return, setting down a tray full of food down in front of Sam and then climbing over the long metal bench seat to sit down next to him. “Eat up,” he tells Sam. “And don’t look like that, okay? You’re all right. That’s all that matters.”

“Dean,” Sam begins.

“Don’t,” says Dean sharply.

“But—” 

“I said no, Sammy.”

Sam just sighs. “Fine,” he says in the end, resolving to talk about this later, and then turns to his food.

It smells delicious, toast and omelet and orange juice, and it’s not much but he can’t finish it anyway, and it doesn’t seem to matter how hungry he is. After months of nothing but questionable broth, Sam’s stomach refuses to accept more than two bites of anything heavier, and with no small amount of regret he pushes his tray over to Dean.

“Sam, you barely ate,” Dean says, not bothering to disguise his concern.

“I’ll throw up if I eat more,” Sam tells him, making a face.

“Not used to it,” Benny adds.

“Right,” Dean says after a pause. “Right, okay. We’ll work up to that, then. Benny, I spoke to the chef, he says he’ll see about getting you some blood next time he’s got cattle, all right?”

Benny looks surprised at the unexpected gesture, but composes himself almost immediately and then nods at Dean. “Appreciate it,” he says shortly.

“You gonna be okay for now?” Sam asks.

Benny shrugs. “Managed all that while in that hellhole, didn’t I?”

Sam hums a response at that, before turning back to Dean. “So, Benny told me what happened, but I wanna know, Dean – how’d you find me? How did you know where I was?”

Dean’s face slips into a mask, something hard, stony, and he turns his gaze to his food immediately. “We managed to capture a guy from the other side. He, uh – did not agree with our questioning methods, but he talked in the end. They all do, eventually,” he adds, more to himself than anyone else.

Sam has an idea of what Dean means when he says “questioning methods,” and it’s confirmed when he glances down at Dean’s rolled up sleeve to see a flick of old blood staining it. Dean follows his gaze, a muscle in his jaw spasming when he grinds his teeth, but seems to let it go, forcing himself to relax and then looking up at Sam.

“I’m not sorry,” he says quietly.

“I know,” Sam replies. It’s the only way he knows of telling Dean he doesn’t blame him, and it seems to work; Dean’s expression loosens again, body relaxing, arm brushing against Sam’s as he turns his attention back to his omelet.

“So what’s with the whole place, then?” Benny asks a moment later. “Who are all these people?”

Dean swallows his toast and washes it down with OJ before speaking. “We’re all that’s left,” he explains. “Everyone who managed to outrun the British Men of Letters after they began attacking hunter bases. Some of them we rescued from the experimentation centers, like you guys.” Unspoken is the fact that Dean must have spent hours and hours scanning every face for any sign of Sam, and never finding any until just now. “Mostly they’re hunters, though, or they become hunters. We’ve got a few non-human people, too. Basically, whoever’s running from the Brits ends up here one way or another.”

Sam files away the information for later contemplation, and then asks, “Cas?”

“Been caught up in meetings since we got back from rescuing you,” Dean tells him. “He’s downright pissy about it too, he’s been trying to sneak away to see you for a while but they just won’t let him go.”

“Who’s they?” asks Benny.

“Everyone in charge,” Dean supplies. “Some of the older hunters that survived. You remember Jackson Holmes, Sammy?”

“Uh, yeah,” Sam says after a moment of racking his brains. “Mississippi, 1998 I think? He worked with Dad on that werewolf thing?”

“Yep,” Dean says, popping the p. “He’s there too. And me,” he adds a moment later.

“You’re in charge?” Sam asks.

“Uh, yeah,” Dean answers, sounding a little uncomfortable. “I mean… you know. Considering everything we’ve done over the years, and considering we’re too damn well-acquainted with the Brits to begin with, they thought it would be best if I got to call some of the shots.”

“Dean,” Sam says, a hundred percent sincere, “Dean, that is  _ awesome _ . How long has this been going on?”

“I found this place a couple weeks after they took you,” Dean tells him, tips of his ears a little red from a sort of pleased embarrassment due to Sam’s praise. “Told them who I was, and what had happened. Jackson recognized me too, and soon as he found out they took you, he swore to me he’d help me do whatever it took to get you back. Says he knows how I felt ‘cause, you know, he lost his daughter to the bastard. Anyway, that was about eleven months ago.”

“Eleven months?” Sam repeats, surprised. It had felt like a lot longer. Going by Benny’s expression, he’s thinking the same thing.

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Give or take a couple weeks, I guess. Why, how long did you think it was?”

“I… don’t know,” Sam says after a few moments. “I lost track of the time in there. We didn’t have clocks, or any way of knowing if it’s day or night, and they always kept the lights on. I tried to keep track, but it got hard when I didn’t know how long I’d been knocked out for—” 

“What do you mean, knocked out for?” Dean interrupts sharply. “Sammy, what did they do to you in there?”

“That’s the thing, I don’t know,” Sam tells him. “They always gave me something in the end to make sure I wouldn’t remember any of it. I have no damn idea what they did to me, and neither does Benny.”

Dean’s expression has darkened so much that Sam is having trouble reconciling it with the laughing, smiling man of just half an hour earlier. “I swear, if I could bring them back just to kill them again—” 

“But I’m all right now,” Sam says hurriedly. “Right, Dean? You said that’s all that matters.”

“It is,” Dean says after a moment. “But all the same…”

“Well, they’re dead now,” Benny cuts in. “Good fuckin’ riddance, too.”

“Dean,” Sam says when it looks like Dean is not going to calm down. For good measure he reaches out and places his hand over Dean’s knee. “ _ Dean _ .”

Dean blinks, looking down first at Sam’s hand on his knee, and then up at Sam’s face. “Yeah, Sammy,” he says, his voice softening immediately. “Yeah.”

Sam raises an eyebrow, the question silent. Dean nods back, short but truthful, and Sam relaxes some, taking his hand off Dean’s knee so he can snag his OJ and take a couple sips of it.

“Well, that wasn’t weird at all,” mutters Benny.

“Okay, well,” Dean says, overly loud and bright, an obvious effort to lighten the mood. “R&R’s over, they’re expecting me over at Command in about ten minutes now. Sammy, you doing good?”

Sam assesses himself, catalogues the various pains and aches over his body, and then says, “Stomach hurts a little, and my chest too, but otherwise I’m okay.”

“I’ll get you some more Percocet from Medical,” Dean tells him. “Think you can make it to Command?”

“Me?” Sam asks, blinking in surprise. “Why?”

“Why not?” Dean counters. “You deserve to be there as much as anyone. And while we’re there we can update you on everything that’s been going on.”

“Is Jackson gonna be okay with it?” Sam asks. “And the others?”

“They are,” Dean says in a tone that indicates that it will not be pleasant for them if they aren’t.

“And what about Benny?” Sam asks.

“What about me?” Benny replies. 

“Yeah, I don’t think they’ll let you into Command, sorry,” Dean tells him, and he does look genuinely apologetic.

“It’s all right,” Benny says, waving him off. “I don’t wanna go to Command to begin with. I don’t think they’ll be too pleased with the idea of a vamp tellin’ people what to do.”

“Yeah, about that,” Dean begins. “Benny, no one here knows about that. I wasn’t sure how people would take it. Chef’s the only one who knows, but that’s ‘cause I can trust him.”

“You said there are other non-humans here,” Sam says.

“There are,” Dean says. “But no vamps.”

“It’s all right,” Benny interjects. “I’ll stay on the downlow, Dean, you don’t need to worry.”

“I’m sorry,” Dean says with a grimace. “If there was anything I could do about it, I would.”

“I know,” Benny assures him. “I’ll be fine here, Dean, I’ll find something to keep me busy. You and Sam go on.”

“Are you sure?” Sam asks anxiously.

“Positive,” Benny tells him, and smiles, though it doesn’t reach his eyes. “You be careful, Sam, don’t want you droppin’ dead on the walk over.”

“Ha, ha,” Sam says sarcastically, but as they’re leaving, he turns to give Benny a small smile over his shoulder anyway.

Benny returns it, and it looks real this time.

It’s just after noon, according to Dean, who hands Sam a pair of sunglasses just before they leave the warehouse. Sam puts them on gratefully, and shields his eyes with his hand as well, and even though they still water from the intensity of the sunlight, the marvelous feeling of the sunlight on his skin is more than enough to distract him from it.

Dean keeps his hand on Sam’s back throughout the short walk from one warehouse to another, both to guide him and to comfort him, and Sam is thankful for it. The warmth and weight of it is grounding, anchoring Sam to his current reality, a constant reminder that he’s really here, and he’s really safe, and it wasn’t a dream.

He takes his glasses off once they’re out of the sun and inside the other warehouse, the air cool on his skin as he blinks and lets his eyes adjust to the relatively dark interior. This one’s much more militaristic than the previous one; there’s what looks like a briefing room in one corner, with a whiteboard and a table that seats six; another corner houses a crude gym, with worn down fighting equipment and some ellipticals; and the remaining space is taken up by around twenty or so military-issue Humvees. There’s also a wall decorated with several weapons, all of which looks entirely functional and extremely lethal. There’s a flamethrower and an RPG along with more practical things like crossbows and guns, and Sam can just imagine Dean’s excitement when he’d helped put all this together.

Or had he been worn down instead, tired and aching and still so determined to find Sam?

The table’s already got four people at it, all of them looking irritated as they talk at each other, gesturing wildly at the whiteboard every now and then. None of them seem to have registered Sam and Dean’s arrival, clearly too busy with their argument – until one of them looks up, and stops midway through his sentence.

“Hey, Cas,” Dean calls out with a grin.

In response, Castiel stands up so quickly his chair crashes to the ground. Paying it no mind, he strides around the far end of the table and towards them, looking the same as he always does, dark hair and determined blue eyes, mouth slightly open from what looks like relief.

“Hey,” Sam begins, but in the next moment Cas is hugging him tightly, both arms wrapped around Sam in a warm embrace. Sam hugs him back immediately – God, how he’s missed him – letting his whole body go loose, leaning into Cas as he does so.

“It is  _ so good _ to have you back, Sam,” Cas tells him as he separates, a good few minutes later.

“Thanks, Cas,” Sam says with a smile. “It’s good to see you too. I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” Cas replies at once. “Immensely.” And, to Sam’s surprise, he hugs him again, and Sam feels his lips press momentarily against his temple.

“Want me to give you guys some space?” Dean snarks, and they finally separate, both glaring at Dean.

“That would be unnecessary,” Castiel tells him, at the same time that Sam says, “No, we’re good, thanks.”

“I’m fine too, Cas, thanks for asking,” Dean tells him, as they resume their walk to the table, Cas now situated on Sam’s other side. Both of their arms keep brushing against Sam as they all walk, and Sam feels a sudden rush of warmth, of safety and security and knowing he’s not alone and never will be, not with Dean, not with Cas, not with his  _ family _ .

“I did not ask,” Cas says.

Dean just sighs, loud and exaggerated, and elbows Sam when he laughs. 

Out of the three people remaining at the table, Sam recognizes only Jackson, who greets him with a firm handshake and a clap on the shoulder, and a “Good to see you, son.” Sam responds with a smile and a nod, and then lets Dean take it from there.

“Sammy, this is Raniya,” he begins, gesturing to the dusky-skinned middle-aged lady in the seat next to Castiel’s. She smiles at Sam in greeting and shakes his hand, and something about her expression reminds him so much of Ellen it’s painful – and of Mary, and that hurts worse.

Dean, sensing Sam’s subtle distress, soldiers on, knowing that keeping Sam distracted will help, and Sam tunes in gratefully to what he’s saying. “Raniya is a werewolf. She joined us when the Brits attacked her family. She’s in charge of training every new recruit we have, especially if they weren’t hunters to begin with. Makes a mean apple pie too, once in a blue moon,” he adds, eyes crinkling at the corner as he smiles.

“Looking forward to having some, then,” Sam says with a smile.

“As long as you don’t share with Dean,” says Raniya with a grin.

“Traitor,” hisses Dean dramatically, before gesturing towards the person sitting next to Raniya. “That’s Alex. They’re a hunter, born into the life. Joined us after—”

“After those sons of bitches slaughtered my whole neighborhood,” finishes Alex with a vehemence to their tone that speaks of lifetimes of bitterness and pain experienced in just a few months. “But I hear that’s their MO for anyone who doesn’t agree with them, not a shit given if you’re a hunter or a non-human or anything else,” Alex adds. They don’t look much older than Sam and Dean, with an unlined face and long jet black hair held back in a braid, a single eagle feather adorning their head. Alex continues, “Anyway – I’m in charge of the weaponry, which basically means it’s my full-time job to keep Dean from humping the flamethrower when he thinks I’m not looking.”

“Hey!” protests Dean indignantly, as the table dissolves into laughter. Sam finds himself joining in, grinning at the mulish expression on Dean’s face as he flips Alex off.

“You can’t do that,” Alex tells him. “It’s a grievous offence in my culture for a white man to flip off a Native.”

Dean pales at that. “Shit, I didn’t mean – look, I was kidding, Alex, you know that, right? Didn’t mean to—”

But Alex is cracking up too now, and Dean’s mouth drops open in outrage as Alex turns to wink at Sam, and say, “He makes it so goddamn  _ easy _ to fuck with him, I swear.” The mirth in their tone is a sharp contrast to the previous simmering fury, but it’s contagious, and Sam finds himself laughing, even though it’s at his brother’s expense.

“I don’t hump the flamethrowers, and also you’re an asshole,” Dean hisses at Alex, before sitting down in the empty chair next to them. Alex just grins cheerfully and flips Dean off too.

Sam takes the chair next to Dean, still smiling, while Cas uprights his own and sits in it. Jackson, who’s been watching the proceedings with an air of resigned fondness, finally takes his place at the head of the table, and then says, “Okay, now that Dean’s here with Sam, let’s begin, shall we?” 

“Before that, though,” Raniya interjects. “Sam, do you have any questions?”

“Uh, a few,” Sam says, resisting the urge to raise his hand like he’s in a classroom all over again.

“Go on,” says Jackson.

“Right, okay, so, Dean told me some of the basics,” Sam says, “but what I’ve been wondering is – what’s going on outside, exactly? And how many people do we have here? Is this just about resisting, or is there an actual plan to fight the British?”

“Okay, well,” Jackson says after a moment of thought. “Here’s the CliffNotes version – Brits took over, and they opened up Purgatory because they, in their infinite  _ wisdom _ and  _ knowledge _ , thought they could control all those souls, and meanwhile they’d have a lotta subjects to experiment on, so that they could develop weapons to use against anyone who so much as looks at ‘em wrong. You know the demons all vanished first chance they got, don’t even respond to summonings – ain’t been a sighting in months – so they probably thought you’re the next closest thing and that’s why they took you.”

“Sammy’s not—” Dean begins heatedly.

“I  _ know _ , son,” Jackson says patiently. “We all know. Whoever’s got anything to say about it can come see me. My point is, that’s how the British were thinking. Anyway, turns out the souls in Purgatory weren’t too happy about being guinea pigs, who’da thought, right? A few massacres and some genocide later, there’s barely any non-humans left, and whoever’s not here is either dead or in those damned research facilities. No form of government or anything left to speak of. We’ve got around three hundred people here, give or take a few. Had a lot more, but we lost a lot of good people in the initial few skirmishes. And yeah, we’ve got an actual plan to fight, a plan that I’m pleased to say is succeeding. No small thanks to your brother,” adds Jackson, and Dean looks pleased with himself even as his ears turn red.

“Okay,” Sam says a moment later. “Thank you, Jackson.”

“Anything else, son?” Jackson asks.

Sam shakes his head no.

“All right, then, let’s begin the official meeting,” Jackson says. “Okay, our last mission was a resounding success – good job, Dean – we managed to rescue not only Sam but around a dozen other people too, humans and non-humans both. Not just that, we did some serious damage to their facility, which if our intel is right, is one o’ the last few ones left. Beta Squad took a few hostages as well, including the woman in charge of the facility, while Alpha Squad was rescuing Sam Winchester and others. Other than her, they’re all in Medical – apparently their arrest was… forceful.” He says the last with grim satisfaction.

“Is she talking?” Alex asks, referring to the woman in charge.

Raniya shakes her head. “Not just yet, but it’s only a matter of time.”

“Let Dean have a go,” Jackson says.

“That’s the plan,” Cas says, speaking for the first time since the meeting’s begun. “Once Dean’s rested, of course.”

“I’m rested,” Dean says immediately with a hardness to his tone that implies that even if he wasn’t, he’d have no issues with leading the interrogation.

Jackson considers him for a moment. “All right, son,” he says.

“I’m taking Sam with me,” Dean says.

“Are you sure that’s wise?” asks Alex. “No offense, Sam,” they add at once. “I just mean – well, you just got back, you know. It’ll take some time for you to recover.”

“I’ve had worse,” Sam assures them. “A  _ lot _ worse. I’ll be fine.”

“I’m taking him to Medical after this, anyway,” Dean says. “I’ll get him looked at, and I’ll check over the rest of the hostages while I’m there, see if they’re up to talking yet or not. Do we have any names?”

“Not yet,” says Raniya. “We were actually hoping you and Sam would be able to identify them.”

“Maybe,” replies Dean. “Let’s see.”

“In the meanwhile,” Jackson says. “Castiel, I need you to talk to the other rescues, see if there’s anyone healthy enough to be able to get into training immediately. I doubt it, considering we don’t even know what those bastards were doing to ‘em, but no harm in trying. Raniya – I want everyone ready to go at short notice. Alex – weapons and vehicles. I want everything pristine. Sam, Dean – go down to Medical and then to the woman, see what you can learn. Everyone clear?”

There’s a chorus of nods and “yessirs,” and Jackson looks satisfied. “Good,” he says. “That’s it for now. Report back here tomorrow, same time, and we’ll discuss what we know.”

They all stand, Raniya heading off to the training corner to check on the equipment there while Alex heads for the weaponry, winking at Dean on their way. Dean glares back but doesn’t flip them off, not under Jackson’s watchful gaze, but it’s clear that he wants to. Sam smiles wryly at him as they both get to their feet as well, Cas across the table from them doing the same.

“I’ll see you around, Sam,” Cas says, coming around to touch Sam on the arm and smile at him before he leaves.

“See you around, Cas,” Sam replies warmly, patting Cas’s shoulder, and then Cas goes off, too.

“Sam,” says Jackson, just as Sam and Dean turn to leave as well.

“Yes?” Sam says, Dean hovering at his elbow watching Jackson with a frown.

Jackson smiles, the expression transforming his grizzled and stubbly old face, taking a good decade off him. “It really is good to have you back with us,” he says. “And not least because Dean’s been talking our ears off about you any chance he gets, and maybe now he’ll finally shut up.”

“Why are you all ganging up on me today?” Dean asks, in a tone that is dangerously close to a whine.

“It’s funny,” Jackson says with a shrug. “I think your daddy woulda been proud,” he says a moment later, and both Sam and Dean grow serious immediately. “He’da been proud of the men you’ve become,” Jackson tells them.

“I hope so,” Sam says quietly.

“Well, I  _ know _ so,” Jackson tells him. “Anyway, off the two o’ you go, now. Those hostages ain’t gonna interrogate themselves.”

And with that he turns to his whiteboard, which is peppered with locations and bits of intel in shorthand. Dean catches Sam looking at it, and says, grinning, “I’ll let you look at that later, geek boy. For now, we’re getting you looked at. C’mon.”

His hand is back in its place on Sam’s back, the gesture casual yet intimate, grounding Sam once more. Dean’s touchy feely when he wants to be, but this is new even for him, and Sam understands it’s his way of reassuring himself that Sam’s with him, solid and alive, and that he’s not going anywhere. And so he leans just slightly into the touch, and lets Dean guide him off to Medical, and relishes in the fact of his brother’s presence, of their being together again, against all odds and every effort of the Brits.

Medical is in yet another warehouse. There is a cluster of them, according to Dean, for residence, command, medical, storage, and one that functions as a prison of sorts, used for both unruly members  of  the resistance, and hostages. Sam listens attentively, looks around as much as he can in the sun before his eyes begin hurting, and does his best to remember everything.

The person in charge of Medical is a harried looking woman whom Dean introduces as Dr. Pearce. Her scrubs are a faded blue and her dark blond hair is pulled into a messy braid, and she looks like she hasn’t slept in days. It’s entirely possible, considering the circumstances.

“Hello, Sam, good to meet you when you’re conscious,” she says when Dean introduces them. “Why don’t you sit down over there—” she points to one of the empty beds, “and I’ll be with you in a minute.”

“Looks like you’ve got your hands full here,” comments Dean, looking around at the other healthcare people rushing all over the place, checking on patients and equipment and supplies, all the stuff required to run a makeshift hospital.

Dr. Pearce just shakes her head, running a hand down her face after. “Don’t even,” she mutters. “The only rest I’ve gotten in a while is the twenty minutes I napped after Sam’s surgery. Can’t remember the last time I ate. I’m at the end of my fucking rope, trying to stretch the supplies, but at the rate we’re going – Dean, we won’t last long.”

“How much time?” Dean asks quietly.

She considers it. “Two months, three if we’re extra careful. It wouldn’t be so bad if we hadn’t lost Alfonsi, but…” She trails off, grimacing.

“What happened?” Sam asks.

“Alfonsi was the other surgeon,” Dr. Pearce explains. “We’d graduated together, you know? Worked together for a long-ass time. But, uh…”

“We’d taken in a newly turned vampire who swore she hadn’t fed,” Dean continues grimly. “She lied. The cure didn’t work, and she ended up killing Dr. Alfonsi and feeding on him.”

Sam grimaces. “Shit.”

“Yeah, shit,” says Dr. Pearce. “Anyway, just give me a second, I gotta go look at Rodrick’s broken knee, I’ll be back in a bit.”

“Is this why you didn’t want people knowing about Benny?” Sam asks quietly once he’s seated on the bed Dr. Pearce had indicated, Dean standing in front of him.

Dean nods. “Yeah,” he says shortly. “The thing with Dr. Alfonsi wasn’t too long ago, so people aren’t really feeling warm towards vamps at the moment. It’ll fade eventually, though… I hope.”

“They really trust you,” Sam comments. “The people here, I mean.”

Dean looks a little surprised at that, but then he smiles a little. “I suppose so,” he says. “They were really looking forward to meet you too, by the way.”

“Me?” Now it’s Sam’s turn to be surprised. “Why? They don’t even know me.”

“They know  _ of _ you,” Dean says. “Dude, we’re like  _ famous _ . They know everything we’ve done. I didn’t even have to try that hard to get them to trust me or listen to me. And that sixth chair at the Command table? That’s always been yours. They wanted to save it for when you got back.”

“But why?” Sam asks, thrown for a loop. “How can they be so sure I won’t screw it up?”

“Saved the world, remember?” Dean says with a little grin. “That tends to work in your favor.”

Sam opens his mouth to respond, but just then Dr. Pearce appears at Dean’s shoulder and gently nudges him aside. She takes Sam’s vital signs and then methodically goes over his injuries – the cut on his face that’s been pulling at his skin since he woke up, starting at his temple and going down to just below his cheekbone; the slash across his abdomen that’s aching something fierce now; and the ribs that got cracked during his rescue. She draws some blood too, in hopes of gleaning some clue of what’s been done to him, and listens very careful to his heartbeat with a stethoscope when he tells her about the chest pains he’s been having.

“The thing is,” she says when she’s done. “There’s nothing  _ physically  _ wrong with your heart, not that I can tell. We x-rayed you when you came in and it’s just cracked ribs. I honestly can’t tell what it might be. I just hope whatever it is shows up in your bloodwork, because that’s the only lead I have. Is there anything else?”

“Uh, yeah,” Sam says after a moment. “My ears. They’re, um, ringing, every now and then. Though that’s probably tinnitus from the explosion, right?”

“Right,” she says. “Is your hearing affected other than that?”

Sam thinks on it, and then shakes his head. “No, not that I noticed.”

“Then it’ll fade in a while,” she tells him. “The tinnitus I mean. Once your ribs and abdomen have healed you should be good to go for combat.”

“Combat?” Dean repeats loudly. “He’s not going into combat!”

“Not right now he isn’t,” Dr. Pearce says patiently, while Sam elbows Dean with a glare. “A couple weeks or so and he’ll be okay, though.”

“But—” Dean begins heatedly.

“I’ve had worse, remember?” Sam interrupts, determined. “I’m not a kid, Dean, I’ll be fine.”

“I know, but—” Dean tries again.

“Why don’t you save it for the bedroom, and go look at the hostages?” suggests Dr. Pearce wryly.

“Uh, yeah,” says Dean immediately, ears going red. “Yeah, we’ll do that now. Also, screw you, Doc.”

Dr. Pearce just laughs. “Oh honey, you wish,” she says, winking at Sam. “Go on now, do your jobs, and let me do mine.”

Sam gets to his feet, grinning at her. “It was nice meeting you,” he tells her sincerely.

“Same, kiddo,” she tells him. The nickname doesn’t sound odd even though she’s maybe only a decade older than him. “You come back in a couple days, okay, and we’ll talk about your bloodwork. Sound good?”

Sam nods. “I’ll be here.”

“Cool,” she says, and then makes a shooing motion with her hand. “Run along now.”

To Sam’s surprise it’s not only humans in medical; he sees a few werewolves and even some djinns, both groups kept separate from each other. A lot of them call out to Dean and even to Sam as they pass by, and Dean responds to them by name, while Sam smiles a little shyly and waves awkwardly. He’s still not really used to the idea of all of these people knowing who he is, all of them fighting for him despite never having met him, and, most of all, willing to make him their leader. It’s a lot to process, and he’s waiting till he’s back in the privacy of Dean’s room to try to make sense of it.

The hostages from the research facility are at the end of the warehouse, occupying the last four beds, their hands and ankles cuffed to the beds to prevent them escaping. Three of them are totally unknown to Sam, but he jolts with recognition when he lays eyes on the last one.

Arthur Ketch manages to look supremely uninterested in everything around him even as he lies restrained, one arm in a cast and a spectacularly broken nose accompanied with two black eyes, one of which is almost swollen shut. His lip is split as well, and there’s a gash running the length of his hairline, held closed with crooked butterfly stitches.

“You,” Dean says when he sees him, not bothering to disguise the contempt in his voice.

“Me,” Ketch says, sounding bored. “I see the two of you have survived. You’re rather hard to stamp out, sort of similar to cockroaches, I suppose. Or sewer rats.”

“Kicked  _ your _ ass,” Dean says with no small measure of satisfaction.

“Do you know what was being done to me?” Sam asks, direct, blunt, sickened by the thought that Ketch had been in the same building as him all this while.

“Not precisely, no,” Ketch drawls. “And if I did, why would I tell you?”

Dean takes a step closer to his bed, and leans over him until their faces are inches from each other. “Because,” he says silkily, “you’re at our mercy now. Well, I say mercy – but that term is so subjective, don’t you think?”

“You won’t hurt me,” Ketch says confidently. “You lot are too damned noble, with your morals and your ethics. You’re not going to—” 

Dean punches him, effectively breaking his nose again. It’s quick, hard, and ruthless, and Ketch swears loudly, unbroken hand flying to his nose in a vain effort to stem the waterfall of blood flowing from it. “You son of a bitch—”

“Talk,” Dean says.

“I swear to you, I  _ don’t know _ ,” Ketch says, glaring at him over the top of his hand. His voice has taken on a nasal quality to it, courtesy of the damage to his  nose . “I wasn’t the one in charge, I was just there to make sure everything was being run smoothly.”

“Did you know I was there?” Sam asks.

Ketch regards him, apparently forgetting his nose for a moment. “Yes,” he says in the end. “I knew. But I have no idea what they’ve done to you. Those notes are…classified.”

“Who knows, then?” Sam demands.

“The doctor who was with you,” Ketch says.

“Okay, well, is he here?” Sam asks Dean.

Dean shakes his head. “No,” he replies. “I may or may not have killed him with my bare hands.”

“You  _ what _ ?” Sam asks, shocked, not knowing how to feel about this.

“It was extremely satisfying,” Dean says, and turns a savage grin on Ketch. “Maybe it’ll be just as satisfying when I kill  _ you _ . They’ll let me, you know,” he adds. “The people in charge. I’m kind of a big deal around here. They’ll let me and Sam do  _ anything _ we want. No questions asked.” He punctuates his statement by casually flicking open his switchblade.

“You wouldn’t—” Ketch hisses.

In a flash Dean has the tip of the blade pressed to the soft underside of Ketch’s jaw. “Wanna bet on it?”

“No,” Ketch says after a minute. His blood is running down the blade where Dean’s applied pressure to it. “I don’t. Look. I don’t have the answers you’re looking for. But Toni does.”

“Toni?” Just her name leaves a bad taste in Sam’s mouth. “What’s she got to do with all of this?”

Ketch smirks. “You really don’t know, do you?” he asks, almost as if he pities them.

“Don’t know what?” Dean asks.

“You’ll find out,” is all Ketch says, infuriatingly.

That’s all they get out of him, despite another punch to the nose courtesy of Dean, and some carefully applied pressure to his broken arm, courtesy of Sam. In the end they give him up as a bad job, and with a sigh, as if he’d rather be doing literally anything else, Dean flags down a passing young man dressed in scrubs and informs him that Ketch seems to have broken his nose, twice.

The next location they head to is Holding. Makeshift cells and bars made of whatever could be scrounged up, bits of metal and wood and in one memorable case, PVC. Sam had made a face at it, saying a toddler could break out of a PVC prison cell, but Dean told him the PVC was in fact filled with holy water, so could Sam please go screw himself.

The woman they’ve captured – the head of the research facility – is being held in a corner of the warehouse, away from all the other prisoners (there aren’t many, Sam notes, just a few unruly looking humans and a very disgruntled looking werewolf). Her normally pristine, high-end clothes are torn up and dirtied, and she’s tied to a chair with duct tape covering about half her face. Despite that, Sam has no trouble recognizing her.

“Toni.”

She quirks an eyebrow at him as if in greeting.

“Why don’t you guys take a break,” Dean suggests to one of the two guards standing around her, rifles held at the ready.

“Jackson said—” begins one, a fresh-faced young man who looks like he should be worrying about his middle school science fair project.

“Yeah, I know what he said,” Dean interjects. “And I’m telling you to go have lunch, hell, play cards for a while or something.”

“But—”

“Corey,” sighs the other guard, a man about Sam’s age. “Let’s go.” He lowers his rifle and grabs Corey by the arm. “Come on. Sorry,” he says to Dean as they pass by. “He’s new.”

“It’s all good,” Dean says with a half-shrug.

“When should we come back?” the older guard asks.

“An hour?” Sam suggests.

Dean makes a big show of checking his wrist even though he’s not wearing a watch, well-aware of Toni’s eyes on the two of them. “Nah, I doubt it’ll take that long,” he says. “Make it forty-five minutes, eh, Mark?”

Mark nods, and gives Corey a little shake. “Gotcha, boss. Come on, kid, let’s see if you’ve gotten any better at poker.”

They wait till Mark and Corey have left, and then Dean walks over to Toni and rips the duct tape off her face in a quick and merciless jerk. Her lip starts bleeding immediately, and Dean tosses the tape aside. Sam notes with a jolt of nausea the hair and bits of skin stuck to it as it flutters to the ground.

“Talk,” Dean snarls.

She spits out blood to the side, and then scowls at him. “What do you want me to say?”

“What were you doing to us?” Sam says at once. “Where’s Hess?”

Toni Bevell tilts her head to look at Sam, and her scowl shifts into a sardonic smile. “Wish I could say it’s nice to see you, Sam, but I’m afraid it’s really not.”

“Likewise,” Sam growls.

“I’m not in the mood for chitchat,” Dean snaps, taking a step closer to her. “He asked you something. Answer him.”

“Or what?” she challenges.

Dean’s switchblade is out again. Toni eyes it apprehensively but then lets her face shift into an impassive mask. “What, killing me? How creative,” she scoffs. “Do it, then.”

“I’m not going to kill you,” Dean tells her.

She raises her eyebrow. “No?”

“No,” he confirms. “Well, maybe not just yet. See, when I was down in Hell – I’m sure you know all about that, you fucking stalkers – I learned a few tricks from a demon named Alastair.” Her face pales at the name, and Dean smiles, slow, satisfied. “Ah, I see you’ve heard of him.”

“Master of torture,” Bevell says, sounding afraid despite herself.

“Yep,” Dean says, popping the p. “That he was. Do you know what happened to him, though?”

“We killed him,” Sam tells her. “Painfully.”

“Didn’t forget his lessons, though,” Dean continues. “And I’ve been itching for some practice, it’s really been quite a while.” He punctuates his sentence by lightly tracing the tip of his switchblade across the skin of Bevell’s forearm, and humming in satisfaction as blood wells up in its wake. “This is nothing, by the way. A papercut, at worst. Don’t make me show you how much worse it can be for you.”

She blanches. “You wouldn’t, though,” she says after a moment. “Not you two, with your moral code and whatnot. You’re bluffing.”

“You wanna bet on that?” Dean asks, tone so soft that Sam knows immediately what’s coming.

Toni, clearly, does not. “Yes,” she says, looking Dean in the eyes.

“Wrong answer,” Dean tells her, and plunges the switchblade into the meat of her thigh, twisting when it’s sheathed to the hilt.

She screams, high and agonized, and Dean twists the blade further. “That’s more like it,” he says, before pulling the blade out.

Sam watches the blood well up from the wound in her leg, feeling bile rise at the back of his throat. He’s known all along the things Dean learned from Alastair, the heavy weight of them that Dean never let go of, and he’s accepted it, because it’s a part of Dean, it’s a part of his brother, and that makes it – well, not okay, but acceptable. More palatable. But to know of it and to see it in action are two entirely different things, and the expression on Dean’s face is too damn reminiscent of when he still had the Mark of Cain on his arm, and blood and torture was just a fun night out for him, when he’d had no qualms about making things and people suffer till they begged to die.

He knows Dean hears the little hitch in his breath, because Dean’s shoulders tense up just a little, but a moment later he’s forcing himself to relax, and he doesn’t turn to look at his little brother. He keeps his eyes on Toni, who’s stopped screaming but is breathing heavily through her mouth now, making short gasping sounds as she tries to compose herself.

“Not so much fun when it’s done to you, huh,” Dean comments. “Maybe now you’ll finally understand what it feels like. What you put my brother through.”

Ah, so that’s what this is about.

“That,” Bevell gasps out, “was pure business. Both times. Fun, though,” she lets herself admit with a savage smile.

Sam grabs Dean’s wrist before he can stab her again. He doesn’t give a single shit how much pain she’s in, just that if she’s screaming she won’t really be talking, and that would be counterproductive. He ignores the phantom memories of her touch on his skin, the nausea it brings up all over again, and he says, “What did they do to us? To me? In your lab?”

“Answer him,” Dean says. He hasn’t freed his wrist from Sam’s grasp yet, and Sam can feel it twitching, can feel Dean struggling to resist the urge to stab her again.

“For the rest of them, for the wolves and vamps and all of them,” she manages, keeping her eyes trained on them and away from the sluggishly bleeding wound in her thigh, and Sam knows Dean’s missed the femoral artery on purpose. “For them, it was about developing the most effective weapon to bring them down. Madam Hess let them out, but she thought she could control them. She didn’t expect the sheer numbers, or the savagery.”

“Didn’t expect savagery from a bunch of souls stuck in Purgatory?” Dean repeats incredulously. “God, Sammy, they just keep getting stupider, don’t they?”

Sam just nods in response, not taking his eyes off their prisoner. “And me?” he asks. 

“Curiosity,” she answers simply. “Sam Winchester, the boy with the demon blood. The would-be boy king of Hell. What makes you tick, I wonder? What has the demon blood changed in you, in your body?”

“There’s no demon blood in him,” Dean says, voice taut.

“His bloodwork says otherwise,” Toni says with a smile, teeth bloody. She must have bitten her tongue or the inside of her cheek earlier when Dean stabbed her.

“What does the bloodwork say?” Sam asks before Dean can say anything.

“It was actually quite disappointing,” Toni says after watching him for a moment. “Trace amounts. Very minute, and inert on top of it. There was no reaction to anything, to holy water or salt or consecrated iron, nothing at all.”

“So why didn’t you let me go?” Sam asks.

“Because while we had you, we had insurance,” Toni answers. “You are Dean’s weakness, Sam. He held back on every single one of his missions because he was so afraid of you being in any building he blew up. You were our bargaining chip in case he ever managed to capture Ketch, or me, or Madam Hess. And,” she adds, that bloody smile in place again, “it was just… fun. Like old times. Surely you remember.”

“Screw you,” Sam spits out, tasting bile at the back of his throat, the memory vivid in his mind. “Screw you, Toni.”

“You made a mistake,” Dean tells her quietly, pulling his wrist out of Sam’s slack grasp. “You had to know that I’d always come for him, that I’d find a way to get to him. You had to know what I’d do to all of you if I couldn’t find him. And I’m sure you know what will happen to you anyway, now that I  _ have _ him.”

If Dean’s tone has frightened her, she does not show it. “We took our chances,” she says. “And Sam was not our only bargaining chip, was he?”

“What does that mean?” Sam asks before Dean can speak.

She smirks at him. “Oh, you didn’t tell him, Dean?”

“Tell me what?” Sam asks, looking at his brother. “Dean? What is she talking about?”

“Your sainted mother,” Toni says when Dean doesn’t answer right away.

“What about her?” Sam doesn’t take his eyes off Dean, as if he can read the answer to his questions in his brother’s gaze. But just a moment later, Dean looks away, and a muscle in his jaw twitches.

“What are you talking about?” Sam demands, turning back to Bevell. “What about Mom?”

She has the audacity to click her tongue disapprovingly in Dean’s direction before turning to Sam. “Well, if he won’t tell you, I will,” she says mildly. “Your mum’s with us, Sam. And not as a prisoner. She’s on our side.”

For a few seconds it’s as if every single feeling, every sensation has left Sam’s body, leaving him numb, marblesque. Right at the edge of his peripheral vision he can see Dean, tense and restless, fidgeting with his blade as he keeps his eyes trained on Toni instead of Sam. Toni herself is smirking, clearly enjoying the fact that she knows something he didn’t, that maybe she’s creating tension between them two of them when previously they’d been a united front.

“Dean?” Sam says, hearing his voice as if from miles away. “Dean, is that—?”

“It’s true,” Dean grits out. “She’s not lying, Sammy.”

Everything returns at the same time, and Sam stumbles backwards, feeling overwhelmed. Shock, betrayal, grief all war for dominance in his mind, pulling it three different ways, and in his mind’s eye he can see his mother the way she is on a hunt, and at the same time he remembers the gentleness of her touch, and the sharp contrast tastes bitter in his mouth.

“Dean—”

“We’ll talk about this later,” Dean says, and finally turns to look at Sam, face softening just minutely. “I promise, Sammy, we’ll talk about it. I’ll tell you everything.”

Sam considers him for a moment, and then decides to trust him, decides to believe he’s telling the truth. “Okay, Dean,” he says. “Okay.”

“What, that’s it?” Toni asks. “That’s your reaction? Kind of mild, really, considering what I just told you—”

A second later she screams again, Dean’s knife buried in her right shoulder. “Tell me where Hess is,” he says, still in that silky tone that has Sam feeling cold all over. “Tell me where to find her, tell me everything about her defenses, and tell me how to get past them. And I know you know, you bitch,” he adds casually.

She screams again when he removes the knife, and slumps forward, gasping for breath, blood staining her clothes in slowly widening splashes of scarlet over her thigh and shoulder. There is pin-drop silence in the warehouse now; everyone seems to be holding their breath, guards and inmates alike.

“Why should I tell you?” she manages eventually. “You’ll kill me.”

“Oh, I’ll do that anyway,” Dean promises her. “But if you cooperate, if you tell me everything you know, I’ll do it quickly. Or, you know, as quick as possible,” he amends in a tone that does not bode well for her no matter what she chooses.

Dean’s face looks like it might as well be carved from stone, the lines of it harsh, jaw tight and tense. Every muscle in his body is coiled, as if waiting for release, waiting to be sprung free, and Sam realizes that he doesn’t want it to get to that. It makes him uneasy, the fact that Dean, the way he is right now, is scaring him a little.

And yet, another part of him that’s battling for dominance knows that this is all because of him, this is all  _ for  _ him, that Dean would never damage his soul this way for anyone else, and  _ that _ ignites a spark in Sam’s chest, fans it into a flame, keeps him warm. Everything around them has changed so drastically, and yet this is the one thing that will always remain the same – the lengths that they are willing to go to for each other, the things they’re willing to do, the pieces of themselves they’re willing to give up.

“What if I don’t cooperate?” Toni’s voice cuts through Sam’s thoughts.

Dean shrugs, nonchalant. “You will,” he says confidently. “It’s just a matter of how easy you want to make this on yourself.”

“What will you do?” she asks, and for the first time, her apprehension shows.

“That’s not what you should be asking,” Dean tells her, casually flicking his bloody switchblade open and closed, open and closed.  _ Snick, snick, snick _ . “What you  _ should _ be asking is this, you snobbish, self-righteous, sadistic, smug piece of  _ shit _ – what will be left of you when I’m done?”

She tells him everything in the end. They always do.

Dean leaves her bloodied in a heap on the floor, with more broken bones than Sam can count. There is a fire in his eyes, pulsing through his veins, and Sam is almost afraid to look at him, to touch him. His heart is uncomfortably loud in his chest, still reeling from everything he’s been through, all the revelations of the past forty-five minutes. By the end, he’d almost begun feeling pity for Toni. Almost.

She’s alive, but barely. Not a single sound is made in the warehouse; everyone looks away from them as they pass by on their way to the door. Sam doesn’t need to have any supernatural senses to be able to smell the fear coming off guards and inmates alike in nauseating waves. They’re terrified of Dean, and by extension of Sam, and Sam’s not sure that this is a good thing. This is going to come back to bite them in the ass, he’s sure of it.

They meet Mark and Corey at the door, just returning from their lunch break. “You done, boss?” Mark asks. Sam sees his eyes flick towards the blood splashed on Dean’s shirt, and then back, looking completely unfazed.

“Yeah,” Dean says, as if Mark’s asking if he’s done with his stroll through a park.

“She talk?” Corey asks.

Dean nods. “Not looking too good, though,” he says. “I’d call Dr. Pearce if I were you, see if she can come down herself, or spare one of her people.”

Mark frowns. “That bad?”

Dean just shrugs, before reaching out to touch Sam’s wrist. He ignores Sam’s flinch at the sudden contact and says, “C’mon, Sammy.”

Their walk back to Residential is silent, even though their steps are in perfect sync and their shoulders brush lightly as they go. Dean is clearly wondering how best to bring up the topic again, while Sam finds himself still trying to make sense of it all, of everything Toni’s told them, and what they’re supposed to do now. 

Residential is as lively as it was earlier when they get there. There are people settled about the living-area, playing cards and talking, trading stories, and some more in the mess area too. A few of them stop to greet Sam and Dean, but Dean doesn’t answer anyone, expression stony, the blood on his clothes bright in contrast with his gray shirt. No one bothers them after that, and they manage to make it to Dean’s room without any more interactions, though Sam  does note a fair amount of side-eyes and whispers.

Sam collapses onto the single bed in the room almost at the same moment that Dean closes the door; all the energy seems to have drained from him, leaving him fatigued, the exertion of the past few days catching up with him. The cherry on top is the emotional distress, the swirling of panicked thoughts in his brain, the cocktail of betrayal and pain that flavors every emotion.

“Hey,” says Dean quietly, and the bed dips as he sits down next to his brother. “Sammy.”

“Yeah,” Sam mutters, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees, hands clasped between them. His hair, in desperate need of a trim, falls out from behind his ears and hangs between him and Dean, shielding him from Dean’s eyes.

A second later he feels a tentative hand between his shoulder blades, and Dean says, voice low, “You all right?”

Sam lets out a short, mirthless laugh. “No.”

There is a moment’s silence, and then Dean’s hand is no longer on Sam’s back. Sam misses it as soon as it’s gone, the feeling of security it gave him, the stability of it, but before he can dwell too much on it, Dean says, “Okay, we should talk. About Mom.”

“When were you going to tell me?” Sam asks, still not looking up or at his brother.

“When I had the chance to,” Dean answers quietly. “Sam, I only just got you back, and you were half-dead when I found you. You’re in a new place surrounded by a lot of new people, and there’s a lot going on. I didn’t want to overwhelm you.”

Sam takes in a deep breath, and holds it as he thinks about what his brother’s saying. Dean remains still next to him, waiting patiently, but almost apprehensively, as if he’s afraid that Sam might not believe him.

But Sam exhales, lets it all out, and then asks, “ _ Why _ ?”

“I wish I knew,” Dean admits. His hand returns to its place on Sam’s back, and Sam relaxes minutely. “I don’t know how she justifies this to herself. I don’t know how she sleeps at night.”

“Did she know they had me?” Sam asks quietly, and then immediately wishes he hadn’t; he’s not sure he wants to know.

“I don’t know,” Dean says after a moment. “But, Sammy…”

“She had to have known.” Sam voices what Dean is reluctant to say.

“Yeah,” Dean says.

“And she didn’t do anything about it.” This is a statement, not a question, whispered on a broken sigh, and the ache in Sam’s chest is rising.

Again, Dean takes his hand off Sam’s back, and then a second later he’s gently brushing Sam’s hair back, tucking it behind his ear so he can look at his face. “Sammy,” he says quietly. “I know it hurts. It know it sucks ass. She betrayed us, she left us for  _ them _ .”

Sam lets out a wet scoff, knowing without looking that his nose is red, cheeks flushed and eyes wet as he tries to remain composed. “Is this supposed to be helpful?” he mutters.

Dean ignores him, wisely, and continues. “But Sam, I’m still here,” he says. “And so is Cas. And now there’s Benny, too. We’re all still here, Sam.” He finishes with Sam’s hair, and lets his hand fall to rest on Sam’s knee, warm and heavy. “I won’t leave you, I won’t let anyone hurt you again, Sam. I swear to you. If you can believe nothing else, believe  _ that _ , Sammy.”

“I do,” Sam says quickly, the words falling out of his mouth before he can stop them, “I do, Dean, I do. It just… I’m just… Dean, it’s  _ Mom _ , and we were supposed to have her back—”

The words are a knife in his chest, twisting, and he’s gasping for breath, fingers gripping tightly at each other—

“She wasn’t supposed to—”

“Sammy, Sammy hey—”

“Dean, I – I can’t breathe—” Nothing is making its way past his lungs, past his throat, and the world is swimming, Dean’s room hazy in his eyes, and there is a light sheen of sweat over his skin, pooling in the hollow of his throat—

Dean’s hand is on his back again, and the other one cradling his face, manhandling him until he’s facing his brother. “Look at me,” Dean orders, voice sharp. “Sammy look at me,  _ look at me _ —”

Sam does, breath coming in short huffs and doing nothing for him, exacerbating the pain in his chest, and oh God, oh God is he having a heart attack—

Dean grabs his hand, places it over his own heart, and says, loud and firm, “Count, Sam, count my heartbeats. C’mon. One, two—”

Sam spreads his fingers wide, palm flat over where he knows Dean’s tattoo is under his bloodstained gray shirt, and focuses on his heartbeat, steady and stubborn in his chest. “Three, four, five,” he murmurs, other hand clutching at Dean’s sleeve. “Six, seven, eight—”

“There you go,” Dean says reassuringly, “there you are, c’mon, keep counting, Sammy—”

So he does, he keeps his hand over Dean’s heart and he counts, until he can feel the vice around his chest loosening, and his breath is coming a little easier. Dean keeps his hands on him even after he’s relaxed completely and leaned into Dean, letting his hand fall from Dean’s chest so he can rest his head on his shoulder. If he was exhausted before, he is absolutely drained now, hollowed out.

“You all right?” Dean asks quietly, and his hand is back in Sam’s hair, going through it slowly, nails scratching lightly at Sam’s scalp.

Sam closes his eyes. “Yeah,” he mutters. “Yeah, I think so.”

“That happen a lot?”

“Sometimes,” Sam tells him. “Never this bad, though. I don’t know why it’s like this now—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Dean interjects sharply, cutting into Sam’s panic before it can escalate. “We’ll find a way to fix it, okay? We’ll go see Dr. Pearce, she’ll know what to do, okay?”

Sam inhales, counts to ten, exhales until he can feel his heart slow just a bit more. “Okay,” he says. “Okay, Dean.”

They sit like that for a while, Sam’s head on Dean’s shoulder, Dean’s fingers gentle in his hair, and the world seems a little quieter, a little safer, and if Sam closes his eyes he can almost imagine they’re back at the bunker, hanging out in Sam’s room bingeing something on his Netflix, nothing to worry about except running out of popcorn and beer—

But the bunker burned down, and Sam was taken and used as a lab rat, a guinea pig for whatever sick ideas the British Men of Letters could come up with, and now he’s tired and broken down, and Dean’s hardened and angry and sharp-edged, and the world has gone to hell. They’re never going to go back to that again, to a time when the world was not so desolate and when they still had places to call home.

“Do we still have Baby?” Sam half-mumbles, and feels Dean smile.

“Yeah, ‘course we do,” Dean tells him. “Haven’t taken her out in a while though.”

“Why not?”

“Wasn’t gonna do it without you,” Dean answers shortly.

That makes Sam feel some kinda way, but before he can think about it, the door opens and Cas sticks his head in. “Sorry to disturb you two,” he says, “but Jackson is asking for you in Command. He wants to know how it went with the hostages.”

Sam sighs, lets himself have just one more moment of quietude before he straightens his back and sits up. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, okay, we’ll be there. Thanks, Cas.”

Cas nods at him. “You all right?” he asks, almost as an aside, but there is real concern in his voice.

“We’re fine,” Dean says, answering for both of them.

“Okay,” Cas says, and ducks back out again. There is no sound of footsteps, though, which means he’s waiting outside the door for them.

“Let’s go?” Dean asks Sam.

Sam nods, and gets to his feet. “Yeah, let’s get this over with.”

Cas is waiting for them outside the door, as expected. His eyes narrow in concern when he gets a look at Sam’s face, but thankfully he doesn’t say anything, just falls into step on Sam’s other side, and says, “Dr. Pearce radioed in to say she’s got Toni Bevell. Would you two, by any chance, know something about that?”

“Nope,” Dean says casually, lying through his teeth.

“That’s what I thought,” mutters Cas, and to Sam’s surprise he sounds exasperated.

“Yeah I bet that’s what you thought,” Dean retorts with an eye roll.

“So is there a reason you’re both acting like children?” Sam asks when Castiel’s astoundingly mature response is to move past Sam to elbow Dean in the ribs.

“We’re fine,” Cas says at once, smiling beatifically at Sam even as he falls back into place at Sam’s other side. “What about you, Sam?”

“Uh,” Sam says after a moment. “I’m fine too?”

Cas pats him on the arm. “We’re here for you, Sam. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I do,” Sam tells him with a small smile. “Thanks, Cas.”

“You are most welcome. I’m so glad you’re back, Sam, it’s so nice to spend time around  _ rational, reasonable _ people.”

“Uh,” says Sam again. “Thank you?”

Cas just smiles at him again. It would look very pure and innocent if Sam wasn’t perfectly aware of how much better Castiel had gotten at channeling his frustration into sarcasm and passive-aggressiveness. Usually directed at Dean, who in this moment is looking anywhere but at the angel, brow furrowed and a petulant expression on his face. It’s near impossible to believe that this is the same man who’d been torturing a hostage not half an hour ago; he looks like a sullen teenager, and despite himself, despite the situation, Sam finds himself grinning.

“Looks like you two had a lot of fun while I was gone, huh,” he comments as they step out of Residential.

The levee breaks; Cas rounds on Sam, an expression of hilarious exasperation on his face. “Sam, you don’t even  _ know _ ,” he says, and he almost sounds desperate, while Dean scoffs. “It was like looking after the world’s most homicidal toddler. He tried to steal the flamethrower nine times, Sam.  _ Nine times _ ! He just would not listen to reason!”

“Well, forgive me for being upset my brother was gone!” Dean snaps.

“No, see, that I could deal with,” Cas says, still addressing Sam while somehow managing to glare at Dean. “Unfortunately, I’ve had to deal with that numerous times in the past. It was the homicidal fury that was irritating, Dean. A lot of the torturing was  _ extremely unnecessary _ .”

“Well, it worked, didn’t it?” Dean retorts.

“That is not the point—” 

“Then what,  _ pray tell _ , is the  _ point _ —”

“We’re here,” Sam declares, interrupting them. “Can you please pretend to be adults before we march into a place where people see you as leaders?” He waits until they both look sufficiently abashed, and then opens the door to Command.

Jackson, Raniya, and Alex are waiting for them at the table in the corner, all three of them discussing something among themselves. They stop abruptly when Jackson spots Sam, Dean, and Castiel, much to Sam’s unease – it looks a lot like they were discussing  _ them _ . Or, going by the way Jackson’s eyes rove over the bloodstains on Dean’s shirt before fixing on his face, they were discussing Dean, and the way Dean handled Toni Bevell.

Nobody says anything about it, though, to Sam’s temporary relief. He’s barely processed it himself, he doesn’t know how he’ll handle a bunch of near-strangers talking about it, and that too while Dean is still feeling leftover anger from it, no matter what he acts around Sam.

Instead, Jackson stands to greet them, saying, “Glad to see you again, boys, Cas. Sit down, and let’s talk about what y’all found out.”

They take their seats. Raniya gives Sam a warm smile, and Alex holds out a first for him to bump. The two of them extend the same courtesy to Dean, but Sam notes that Raniya’s smile is a bit frostier and Alex hesitates a little while extending their fist. Dean notices too, and he doesn’t give any outward reaction, but his shoulders are tense and his teeth are clenched as he moves his chair just a bit closer to Sam and away from them.

“Cas, why don’t you go first,” Jackson says.

“I spoke to the survivors,” Castiel says in answer. “A lot of them are too injured to fight, and will need significant time to recover. However, around a dozen or so have only minor injuries, and according to Drs. Pearce and Kelly, should be all right for combat once they’ve received training. They will be here with you tomorrow bright and early, Raniya, once they’ve had sufficient time to rest and recover.”

“It’s been three days,” says Raniya. “How much more time do they need?”

“Dr. Pearce says just tonight,” Cas tells her. 

“Okay, got it,” says Jackson. “Dean, Sam?”

“Went down to Medical,” Dean answers. “Dr. Pearce got a look at Sam, and then we got to the hostages. Identified one of them – Arthur Ketch, we know him from before. He didn’t know much, but he claimed the woman in charge did, and we identified her too. Toni Bevell, know her from before too. Had a nice little chat with her, and she told us some stuff.”

“Such as?” asks Alex.

“Where Hess is,” Dean says, and stands. “Mind if I appropriate your whiteboard, Jackson?”

Jackson waves his hand in a gesture that indicates  _ feel free _ , and Dean erases about half the whiteboard on the right side. “Okay, here’s what we know,” he says. “Sammy, mind giving me a hand?”

“Uh, sure,” Sam says, blinking away his surprise before getting to his feet and joining Dean. He feels a little self-conscious at the four pairs of eyes on him, watching him expectantly, but then Dean gives him a small, encouraging smile and hands him a marker, and Sam decides to pretend it’s just the two of them, and this is just another case.

“Okay,” he says, and takes a deep breath. “Okay, so.” He writes down  _ What we know _ on the top of the whiteboard and underlines it. “Hess is hiding out in Arkansas, about a two-day drive from here, in a research facility like the one you guys found me in.”

“We’ve got maps of it,” Dean says, “and we know their layouts are identical, so we can use that one as a blueprint to plan our attack.”

“Bevell said she’d been in constant communication with Hess, which obviously stopped when she was taken,” Sam continues. “In that event, she said Hess will tighten up her defenses, expecting to be targeted next. Chances are she’s recalled all her people from the remaining facilities so that she can increase security at her base.”

“There are only three facilities left, so not a  _ lot _ of people, but a significant amount nevertheless,” adds Dean. “Still, we’ve faced worse odds, so I have no doubt we can pull this one off too. We’ll just have to take more people and be more careful in our planning. Raniya, how soon can you have the newbies ready for an op?”

Raniya hums thoughtfully. “A week,” she says in the end.

“Not sooner?” Dean asks, frowning.

She raises an eyebrow at him. “I’m good at what I do, Dean, but even I can’t work miracles. A week.”

“Fine,” concedes Dean, and Sam writes it down. “Alex, can the cars handle a two-day drive? Can they transport about…” Dean hums contemplatively under his breath, and then goes, “about four dozen or so people?”

“Dean, that’s everyone we have,” Jackson says. “Who’s supposed to defend the base, then?”

“We’ll leave a skeleton crew back here,” Dean says.

“Comprised of  _ whom _ ?” Alex asks. “Kids and old people?”

“Thirty people go with you,” Jackson says firmly. “The rest stay behind. I’m not budgin’ on this,” he adds warningly when Dean opens his mouth to argue. “Thirty should do it.”

“ _ Fine _ ,” Dean says again, looking annoyed but thankfully not arguing further.

“Who’ll take point?” asks Alex.

“Dean, with Sam,” answers Jackson. “Sam’s spent months in that place, and Dean knows them all inside out. Plus they’ve got experience with this kind of thing.”

“What, storming bases?” asks Raniya.

“No,” says Cas with a half-smile. “Pulling off the impossible with nothing but faith and a concerning amount of guns.”

Sam grins at that, pausing in his writing, and even Dean cracks a smile. “Sounds about right,” he jokes.

“So we’re doing this, huh,” says Alex.

“In a week,” Raniya adds, sounding skeptical. “Can we pull it off?”

“Hell yeah we can,” says Dean. “We’ve faced worse odds, eh Sammy?”

“Right,” says Sam.

“Shouldn’t we wait?” Cas asks.

“Waiting won’t achieve anything,” Dean tells him. “We’re not getting any better intel than this, Cas, and we won’t be any more prepared in a month, or longer. I say we get this done as soon as we can.”

“Besides, the longer we wait, the more time Hess has to improve her defenses,” adds Sam. “I’m with Dean on this, it’s best to get it over with as soon as possible.”

“And will it really be over?” Alex asks.

“Getting Hess has always been our endgame,” says Raniya. “It’s been our goal right from the beginning. We get Hess, we win.”

“And what then?” asks Alex.

There is a silence, during which all of them ponder the question. Sam looks at Cas, Raniya, Alex, and Jackson in front of him, and then turns his head to look at his brother. And Dean’s been looking at him all this while, and when Sam makes eye contact he smiles at him, real and true, and Sam feels something inside of him uncoil.

“Then we’re free,” Sam says.

The rest of the afternoon is spent planning the op in greater detail. Sam and Dean take turns scrawling all over the whiteboard, eventually taking over the other half as well, and every now and then Jackson gets up and adds something in different-colored marker. Dean also brings out a state map of Arkansas from somewhere, and more additions are made to it, color-coded for clarity and emphasized with pushpins and sticky notes.

“Look at you,” Dean murmurs at the end, when everyone else is packing up to leave because they’ve gone over the plan about ninety times and are tired of each other’s faces. “You’re in nerd heaven.”

“It’s organization, Dean, it helps with planning,” Sam retorts.

“Nerd,” Dean says immediately.

“Jerk,” Sam retorts, and smiles automatically.

Dean’s grin is bright enough to light up the whole room. “Bitch,” he says, and it’s the sweetest thing Sam’s heard.

They head back to Residential soon after (Cas having left some time ago, saying he wanted to check up on the other survivors). The sun has set and it’s dark when they step out of Command. There’s no one else around, and the night air is cool on Sam’s skin. He takes in a deep breath, and then another, and feels his lungs expand, feels the freshness of it in his chest. He never thought he would get to enjoy something as simple as fresh air again, and he thinks he’ll never take it for granted again.

Dean watches him out of the corner of his eye, and there’s a slight smile on his face as if he knows what Sam is thinking. He slows his pace deliberately, lengthening their walk back to Residential as much as he can, and Sam adjusts his steps to match his brother’s, and conveys his gratitude in the brush of his shoulders against Dean’s.

“If we do this it’ll really be over, huh,” Dean says eventually.

“Yeah,” says Sam. “About time, huh?”

“Hmm,” agrees Dean. “Not gonna lie, I kinda wish we had some more backup, though. An angel or two wouldn’t have been bad.”

“Well, Cas will be with us, right?” Sam asks.

“Yeah, but Sammy, Cas barely has any powers left,” Dean explains, and something in Sam’s stomach twists. “He’s the only one left, Sam. They’re just about extinct.”

“How?” Sam asks. The idea is an ugly one – even though he knows what angels are really like, he’s grown up believing in them, thinking of them as protectors, and the concept of them being extinct doesn’t sit well with him.

“The Brits,” Dean replies heavily. “Yeah, angels are powerful, but Brits had the numbers, Sammy. If Cas hadn’t been with us hiding out, he wouldn’t have survived either.”

“And his powers?” Sam asks.

“Diminished,” Dean says. “I think he’s only barely just got enough Grace to keep him going. He’s practically human at this point.”

Sam takes a moment for all this new information to sink in, and then leans in a little into Dean’s side. He can see a sliver of yellow light up ahead, where the door to Residential is presumably ajar, a few meters in front of them. “I don’t know how to feel about his,” he admits. “I mean, they were dicks, but I always thought they’d be around, you know?”

“I know what you mean,” Dean answers. “Still, they probably wouldn’t have been any help even if they’d been around. I mean, you remember what those feathered assholes were like.”

“Yeah,” says Sam, and doesn’t go on. He’s not sure how to verbalize his feelings on the matter in a way that makes sense, and anyway, they’ve reached Residential now, and Dean is opening the door.

Cas joins them for dinner, and so does Benny, who’s drinking blood out of an opaque paper cup with a straw. He nods to Dean and claps Sam on the shoulder before taking a seat across from them, next to Cas, who still doesn’t actually require food, just likes sitting with them.

“How you doin’, Sam?” Benny asks.

“I’m good,” Sam tells him. “You? Made any friends?”

Benny rolls his eyes at that. “Didn’t try. Not what I’m here for. So, you two been away most o’ the day, I’m guessin’ you been busy.”

“We were,” Dean tells him, and goes into a shortened version of the day’s events.

Sam picks at his dinner, an unappetizing mush that Chef claimed was mashed potatoes but actually tastes like cardboard. He can’t really eat much, no more than a few bites, but Dean makes him have juice on top of it too so that he’d have some more nutrients in his body. It’s not a lot – a toddler would probably not consider it a full meal – but it makes Sam feel uncomfortably full, like his stomach is hyperextended to bursting.

“This plan o’yours,” Benny says when Dean’s done, and Sam gives up on his meal and turns his full focus on his companions. “I’m in.”

“’Course you’re in,” says Dean at once.

“Am I the only vamp who’s coming?” Benny asks.

Dean hesitates a little, and then nods. “The rest are either human, or werewolves. A couple shapeshifters and some djinn too. We had a vamp but we had to put her down.” 

“Why?” asks Benny, but looks as if he already knows the answer.

“She was newly turned and we tried to cure her, but she’d lied about not having fed and she ended up drinking the doctor who was trying to cure her,” Dean tells him. “People have been wary ever since.”

“I see,” Benny says stiffly.

“I’m not saying you’re going to do something like that,” Dean says. “I know you won’t, Benny. But that’s because I  _ know _ you.”

“And these other people don’t,” Benny finishes. “Don’t worry about it, Dean. I’m good, I am.”

“Look, I’m sorry,” Dean begins.

“Don’t,” says Benny at once. “I said I’m fine, Dean.”

There’s a dangerous edge to this tone that says that while he doesn’t want to fight about this, he will if he has to, and Dean’s got a look in his eye that says he’s not done with this conversation, and these two things together don’t bode well. Before it can escalate, Sam reaches out and puts a hand on Dean’s knee discreetly under the table, and places his other hand on Benny’s arm across the table for just a moment before withdrawing it. “Another week or so and this won’t be a problem, anyway,” he says placatingly. “Then we’ll be free, right, Dean? And it won’t matter.”

“Right,” says Benny. Dean remains silent.

It’s Cas who finally manages to slice through the tension in the air. “Have you found any accommodation yet, Benny?”

“Nope,” says Benny. “Didn’t really ask, and anyway I’m not sure I’m comfortable rooming with someone I don’t know and don’t trust.”

“You could stay with us?” Sam offers. “If you and Dean are okay with it, of course.”

“I’ve only got one bed, Sammy,” Dean reminds him.

“Benny only sleeps during the day, so that shouldn’t be an issue,” Sam says.

Dean shrugs. “I’m okay with it if you are,” he says to Benny.

Benny nods. “Okay, then,” he says.

“You haven’t slept all day, though,” Cas points out. “Will you be needing to sleep now?”

“Nah, I’m fine,” Benny tells him. “It’ll take a while for me to get used to proper day an’ night, anyhow. You guys go on ahead, and I’ll take over in the morning.”

“Cool,” says Sam. “What are you gonna do until then?”

“I could show you around,” Cas suggests. “I don’t need to sleep, and you haven’t really seen the place yet.”

Benny shrugs. “Fine by me.”

They go their separate ways once Dean’s done with his meal – Cas and Benny on their little tour, and Sam and Dean in the direction of Dean’s room. It’s been a really long day, and they fall into bed almost immediately, barely having the energy  to even change into something comfortable. The bed’s nowhere near big enough for both of them, and this is much more obvious now that they aren’t clinging to each other, but Sam figures this arrangement is only going to last for another week or so, and doesn’t comment.

They don’t talk much; Dean moves to make space for Sam, mumbles goodnight, and is promptly out like a light, and Sam follows soon after, curling as close to his brother as he can without accidentally shoving him off the bed.

On his fourth night back, Sam wakes up in the middle of the night unable to breathe, and it just goes downhill from there.

It starts with a nightmare, which is nothing new, that’s a nightly affair, but instead of it petering out eventually, the fear escalates until Sam’s waking because of it, one hand clutching at the fabric of his shirt over his chest, the other moving around blindly in the dark looking for Dean. His breath is coming in short bursts, harsh and gasping, like its clawing its way out of his throat, and his heart is going so fast he’s afraid it might literally burst.

“Dean,” he gasps out, reaching for where he knows Dean to be. “ _ Dean _ —”

“Sam,” comes Dean’s voice in the dark, and then one of his hands is on Sam’s back and the other is grabbing at Sam’s, pulling it away from his chest so he can place his own hand there instead. “Sam, what’s going on—”

“Hurts,” Sam manages to say, fisting his hand in Dean’s shirt. “It hurts, I can’t breathe, can’t  _ breathe _ —”

“Your chest?” Dean questions, and Sam nods before he remembers Dean can’t see it in the dark.

“Yes,” he gasps out. “Dean—”

“It’s okay,” Dean says, though he sounds panicked too, and Sam can tell even through his fear that his brother is barely holding it together, but trying his best for Sam’s sake. “It’s okay, Sammy, it’s okay, I’ve got you—”

It feels like someone is hammering nails into his chest relentlessly, going through his sternum right into his heart, while a fist tightens around his lungs, forcing them closed, and Sam feels like his head is weightless, suspended in midair, and the only real things in the world are Dean’s hands on him, and Dean’s voice in his ear, and Dean’s warm breath on his skin. His brother is half-yelling at him, ordering him to just  _ breathe _ , to count, to inhale and exhale, anything and everything that’s worked before but is worthless now, because Sam can’t, he  _ can’t _ —

“Sam, come on—”

“I  _ can’t _ —” There are tears running down his face, when did  _ that _ happen—

“Fuck,” swears Dean, and takes his hands off Sam so he can wrap his arms around him and drag him in close, Sam’s head almost crashing into his chin at the sudden unexpected motion.

“Dean—”

“I got you,” Dean tells him, and tightens his grip, one hand rubbing up and down Sam’s arm in slow, soothing motions, the other in his hair. “Come on, Sammy, breathe—”

Sam inhales, shuddering and shaking, but manages to hold it for about four seconds before letting it out, and then does the same thing. The ache in his chest has never been this sharp, but it’s already begun to fade, and his ears are ringing but Dean’s voice still comes through clear as day, muttering soothing nothings, lips moving against Sam’s hair, hands in constant motion, and eventually Sam’s vice-like grip on Dean’s shirt loosens, and his body all but melts into Dean’s.

“You okay?” Dean asks, when Sam’s breath has steadied some.

Sam just nods instead of speaking, and closes his eyes, pressing his nose into the side of Dean’s neck.

Dean doesn’t respond. There is silence for a few moments, during which Sam tries to time his breathing with Dean’s, and sync his heart with the constant  _ tap tap tap  _ of Dean’s fingers on his arm. It works, a little, and bit by bit he relaxes, letting his body go loose and pliant until Dean is literally physically holding him up.

“That was bad, Sammy,” he says quietly, and his voice isn’t shaking, but it’s a close thing. “That was real bad.”

“I know,” Sam whispers, hoarse. His own voice feels like ground glass scraping the inside of his throat.

“We’re going to see Dr. Pearce tomorrow, okay,” Dean tells him. “We’re gonna find out what this is, and we’re gonna fix this, all right, Sammy?”

“Okay,” Sam says. “But I’m still coming on the op,” he adds.

“Sam…”

“Dean,  _ please _ !” Sam says, and tugs at Dean’s shirt with his hand to emphasize his point. “I want to, I  _ need _ to, okay? After everything they did to me, I can’t just sit back and—”

“Okay, Sam,” Dean says suddenly, and Sam stops short.

“Okay?” he repeats, not sure if he’s heard his brother right.

“I can’t stop you from coming along,” Dean says, sounding resigned. “But you stay with me, all right? You don’t step out of my sight, not for one second, or I’ll kick your ass so hard you’ll be feeling it for weeks. We clear?”

Sam wants to argue, he really does. He’s not a child, and he can look after himself, he doesn’t need to be babysat – the usual stuff. But he’s tired, he’s so fucking tired, he just doesn’t have the energy, and anyway, if he’s being honest with himself. after eleven months, even he can’t bear to be parted from Dean for any longer than is strictly necessary.

“We’re clear,” he says in the end.

“Good,” says Dean emphatically, hands stilling for just a moment. “Don’t you forget it, Sammy.”

“Don’t intend to,” Sam tells him with a snort.

Dean hums his approval, and runs his fingers through Sam’s hair one last time before saying, “You good, Sammy? Gonna be okay?”

Sam assesses himself, deems the chest pain tolerable, and says, “Yeah, Dean. I’m good.”

“Okay.” Dean lets go of him so that they can both lie down again, facing each other, and then says, “Wake me up if you need to, okay? For – for anything.”

“I will,” Sam assures him. “Goodnight, Dean.”

“’Night,” replies Dean, and Sam closes his eyes.

A moment later he feels Dean’s fingers close around his wrist, tips on his pulse point, and he opens his eyes again, though there’s no point considering how dark it is and he can only just barely see the outline of Dean’s face anyway. “Dean?” he questions softly.

“What?” Dean asks, as if challenging Sam to comment on it.

“Nothing,” Sam says after a moment, smiling to himself, and closes his eyes again. “Go to sleep.”

“Yeah, you too,” says Dean. “’Night, Sammy.”

“’Night.” 

Dr. Pearce frowns when Sam tells her about the chest pains he’s been having, and it deepens further when he describes the previous night. “Your bloodwork was clear, though,” she says.

“Anxiety isn’t gonna show up on that though, is it,” Sam says.

“Well, no,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I’m not an idiot, Sam. What I meant is that what you’re describing sounds like a heart issue, not anxiety.”

Sam flushes. “I didn’t mean—”

“I know,” she interrupts, a little impatiently. “Okay, I’m gonna do an X-ray, all right? Maybe whatever it is will show up on that.”

“You really think it could be his heart?” Dean asks apprehensively, moving closer to Sam as if he can somehow protect him from his own body.

“Looks like it, but I’m not gonna say anything else until I can look at his X-ray,” Dr. Pearce replies. “Though,” she adds, “if it  _ is _ a heart issue, the anxiety is probably making it worse. I’ll let you guys know when we can take the X-ray, okay?”

“What, you’re not going to do it now?” Sam asks, surprised.

She shakes her head. “We don’t have any contrast medium, Sam. There’s a hospital over in Ash Springs though, I’m hoping they’ve got some in their store. Dean, someone’s going to have to go and retrieve it soon.”

“I’ll send a team immediately,” Dean says at once. “Doc, he’s gonna be okay, right?” His tone, previously determined, softens into concern, and Sam’s heart twinges in his chest in a way that has nothing to do with anxiety or heart problems.

“I can’t say anything else until I can look at his X-ray,” she repeats, but there’s a set to her jaw that Sam doesn’t really like. Before he can dwell on it, though, she gestures to Sam to get off the makeshift examining table he’s sitting on and says, “Okay, shoo off now, boys. I’ve got a helluva lot more people to look at and not enough time to do it in. Sam, if you get another attack again you come straight to me, okay?”

Sam nods at her as he slides off the table. “Gotcha, Doc.”

“How’s the abdomen healing?” she asks. “I’d have asked earlier, but you know.” She gestures at his chest.

“Oh, it’s fine,” Sam tells her. “The Percocet helped, thank you.”

“Still taking it?”

“No, I stopped after a few,” Sam answers, and she nods approvingly.

“Good boy,” she says with a slight grin. “Last thing we need around here’s addiction.” Sam stiffens at that, mind unwillingly thrown back to pre-Apocalypse days, and next to him Dean reacts as well, shifting just a bit closer to Sam, which Sam hadn’t even thought was possible considering how close they already were to begin with.

“Not gonna be a problem,” he says, a warning in his tone that Dr. Pearce receives loud and clear.

“Gotcha,” she says after a minute, but her clear blue eyes are focused on Sam, as if she’s trying to read him. He wants to shift his gaze, look away, but he doesn’t, maintaining eye contact until she’s the first to break it. “All right then boys, I’ll see you later.”

“Later, Doc,” Sam says when it’s clear Dean won’t speak.

They walk back out of Medical in silence, broken only when Sam says, “Dean, you didn’t have to talk to her that way.”

“She shouldn’t be that casual about serious stuff like addiction,” Dean says shortly.

“She doesn’t know about the demon blood, Dean, she can’t have known,” Sam says, gentle and patient.

“Not the point,” Dean says.

Sam wonders what he can say to that, decides the answer is  _ nothing _ , and just sighs and gives up. “Thanks, though,” he adds a moment later.  _ For standing up for me,  _ he doesn’t say. 

“It’s… it’s nothing,” Dean responds, a little awkwardly. They’re not used to this, to voicing the things between them so easily, having relied so much for so long on unspoken words and incomplete gestures. But, Sam figures, eleven months apart seem to have made them much more open, less afraid of being vulnerable around each other. There’s still a thick plate of armor that separates them from the rest of the world, but now they share it.

So Sam smiles sunnily at his brother, in a manner he hopes is reassuring, and knocks his hand against Dean’s, who looks down at it before looking up at Sam, and returns the smile, albeit a little awkwardly. Sam knows Dean’s worried about him, and he is as well, but he also knows that whatever it is, they’ll figure it out. They always do.

Two days before they’re due to set out for the op, Sam returns to his and Dean’s room after training to find it even emptier than it had previously been. The walls are bare now, no longer adorned with weaponry or pictures of their family, and so is the bedside stand. The only sign that someone lives here is the presence of the sheets on the bed.

Sam frowns, taking in the Spartan appearance of the room, so totally unlike Dean. In fact, it doesn’t look that different from how Sam’s room used to be, back at the bunker – and it was the total opposite of Dean’s, which was homelier, lived in, filled with keepsakes and mementoes of their lives together. And  _ that _ is concerning. Sam knows that this place was never meant to be a permanent home for them, but he’d just assumed that they’d return here after the op and stay till they figured out where to go next.

Dean arrives at that moment, having been delayed by Alex on the way, and sees Sam standing in the doorway, not quite entering their room. “What’s up?” he asks, standing next to Sam, casually leaning against the doorframe.

“Why is it empty?” Sam asks instead of answering, tilting his head towards the room.

Dean inhales sharply. “I don’t know how to explain it,” he says quietly. “I just had this urge to put everything in the Impala. I don’t even know  _ why _ . Where would we even go? But… I don’t know. I can’t explain it.”

“Well, does that also include our clothes?” Sam asks. “Because I was hoping to shower but now I’ve got nothing to change into.”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Wait here,” he tells Sam. “I’ll get them back from the car.”

Sam watches him turn and jog off, clearly not wanting to admit he hadn’t thought of that, and smirks to himself before finally entering the room. He sits down on the bed and takes his boots off before moving further up the bed and stretching his legs out before him, back against the headboard. God, but he’s tired. Raniya’s got them all stretched to the edge of their limits, and she doesn’t even care who’s a hardened hunter and who’s a rookie. Everyone gets their asses handed to them just the same. A kid had made the mistake of pointing out that she’s a werewolf and stronger than them so it was unfair to hold the rest of them to that standard; the asskicking that ensued had been nothing short of epic.

He closes his eyes and lets his head fall back against the headboard. He’s had a couple panic attacks in the last few days over the smallest of things, but nothing that Dean couldn’t handle, and nothing as awful as the one that had woken him up in the middle of the night. The ringing in his ears is almost gone, and while his abdomen still hasn’t healed completely, the pain has gone down enough that he isn’t hindered too much while moving around or even while training. He’s had much worse, after all; it’s a papercut compared to what he’s faced in the Cage, and while it looks and feels like it should hurt, the pain barely even registers in his mind anymore.

A knock on the door draws Sam from his thoughts, and he opens his eyes to see Cas standing in the doorway, looking uncertain. “Hello, Sam,” Cas says. “May I enter?”

“Of course,” Sam says, shifting to make space on the bed for Cas.

Cas closes the door behind himself and then takes up the offered space, though he keeps his feet on the ground. “I just wanted to let you know that the team Dean dispatched has reached Ash Springs. They should know soon enough if there’s any contrast medium at the hospital, or not.”

Sam nods. “Right. Thanks, Cas.”

“No problem,” Cas says, and then pauses, hesitating.

“What is it?”

“I wish I could heal you,” Cas replies, the corners of his mouth pulling downwards. “If I still had my powers, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

“I know, Cas,” Sam begins, but Cas isn’t done yet.

“It would definitely have come in handy in the past, too,” he continues. “For instance, every time that Dean has gotten hurt doing something reckless in his search for you. He’s all right,” he adds at once, and Sam figures that his alarm must have shown on his face. “Dean is fine, Sam. It was nothing serious. I just… worry,” he admits. “About the two of you. You’re so…  _ human _ .”

“We’re all right, Cas,” Sam says in what he hopes is a reassuring tone. “Aren’t we always?”

“I am not going to answer that,” Cas says with a wry smile.

There’s a comfortable silence for a few moments, and then Sam says, now a little hesitant himself, “Dean told me you’re the only angel left.”

Castiel nods. “I am. The British Men of Letters killed Naomi about two months after you were taken, and she was the only one left other than me.”

“I’m sorry,” Sam says quietly. They weren’t friends, not anything close, but they were two of a kind at least, and now it’s just Cas. 

The angel gives him a sad smile. “Thank you, Sam. I appreciate it.”

Sam returns the smile, and reaches out to pat Cas’s arm. “Look, if you need to talk about it, or anything…”

“I’m fine,” Cas assures him. “It gets lonely at times, in my head, but I have you and Dean. Your brother especially has not given me any opportunity to find the time to be upset in these past few months,” he adds with a smile. “I’ve had my hands full with him.”

“About that,” Sam says. “Cas – thank you. For – for keeping him alive, and looking after him.”

This time when Cas smiles it’s warm and real. “You know I always will, Sam. Just as I will always look after you.”

“I know,” Sam says quietly. “It means the world to me.”

Cas reaches out to squeeze Sam’s hand once, and then lets go. “You have done more for me than I could ever put into words, Sam. I can never repay you and Dean. Being by your side is the least I can do for you.”

Sam gives him a smile, and settles back against the headboard again. Cas follows his lead, taking off his own boots and mirroring Sam’s pose, and the two of them sit in comfortable silence, in the peace that being in each other’s company brings, and Sam realizes just how much he’s missed this in the time he’s been gone. They complete him, his brother and Cas – Dean, a hurricane hell-bent on tearing down whatever stands in his way to his brother, and Cas, the calm after the storm, the earthy smell after a night of rain. They’re his, the two of them, and he thinks that he would much rather die than be separated from them ever again.

The entire complex is in chaos the day before the op. The mess hall is quieter at breakfast than usual, and soon afterwards everyone heads off to wherever they’ve been assigned by Raniya and Cas – training, weapons, supplies, vehicles, and other miscellaneous things that need to be done just before the mission. Benny’s been assigned to helping Raniya with training – it seems she’s figured out he’s a vampire, but to Sam and Dean’s relief has not breathed a word of it to anyone.

Sam and Dean head down to Command after breakfast, both of them silent. They haven’t spoken more than three words to each other since they woke up, even though every now and then one of them opens his mouth to speak and then thinks better of it. The air seems too thick around them, laden with tension, and saying anything feels like it would break some kind of fragile barrier and bring everything crashing down on them.

Whatever it is, it seems to be affecting everyone else too – Alex has dark circles under their eyes, and Raniya looks exhausted as well, half-slumped over the table. Jackson looks more or less the same as he always has, but there’s a gruffness to his tone that gives away the stress he’s under. Cas is not here, having managed to get stuck training recruits with Benny, and Sam and Dean leave his chair empty instead of sitting in it.

“I’m goddamn tired of goin’ over this plan now,” Jackson says as an opener. “So just one more time, an’ that’s it, all right?” Without waiting for anyone to continue, he moves to the whiteboard and launches into the CliffNotes version of the plan, not caring that barely anyone is listening. They’ve gone over it so many times that more than once Sam’s been woken up at night thanks to Dean muttering fragments of it in his sleep.

“Okay,” says Jackson once he’s done. “As for the rest of it – Raniya, how we doin’?”

“They’re ready,” she tells him, sitting up just a little straighter, dark hair escaping her chignon to fall into her face. “As ready as they can be considering it’s only been about a week,” she adds.

“Good,” says Jackson. “Alex?”

“Every single weapon has been cleaned out properly, ammo’s been restocked and loaded into the vans, which have been refueled,” recites Alex hoarsely, sounding like they haven’t slept in days and days. Sam can relate, a little.

“Sam, Dean?”

“We’re good,” Dean says. “The team I sent out to Ash Springs returned last night, so Sam and I are going to Medical to get him x-rayed after this. Dr. Pearce says he’s good to come with us on the op, though.” And she does, though it had taken a significant amount of strong-arming and arguing to get her to agree.

“And your injuries, Sam?”

“They’re all right,” Sam answers. “They’re not going to be an issue.”

Jackson considers this, and then nods at him before turning to address all of them together. “Right. Anyone got any questions?”

No one moves.

“All right, then. I’ll see you all here tomorrow at 0400 sharp, clear?”

A chorus of “clears” sounds out around the table, and then Jackson is dismissing them, turning his back to them so he can face the whiteboard and figure out whatever else he can from the maps and diagrams and blueprints. Raniya stands and goes to join him, but Alex doesn’t, instead making their way to where all the cars are parked.

Sam watches them go, and then turns to Dean. “Is that where Baby’s parked?”

Dean shakes his head. “Nah. I got her someplace else, I’ll show you later.” He taps Sam’s arm once and then stands. “C’mon, let’s get you over to Medical.”

The walk to Medical is just as quiet as the one to Command had been. It unnerves Sam, how silent the whole complex is now, when he’d just begun to get used to all the hustle and bustle. It reminds him a little too much of what his cell in the BMOL research facility had been like, and inadvertently he tenses.

Dean reacts to the minute shift in Sam’s body language almost instantaneously, which speaks volumes about how attuned they’ve become to each other, to every mood and thought and emotion. He still doesn’t talk, though, just leans in a little so that his shoulder brushes against Sam’s with every step they take. It’s not a lot, but it means the world to Sam, the physical contact small but immensely soothing. Dean’s by his side, where he should be. He isn’t going anywhere, and he’s not going to let anyone take Sam from him either. Sam has got nothing to worry about in that regard; no matter what happens, he is never going to be trapped again.

Medical has been steadily getting emptier over the past week, and today it’s almost deserted. There are only three more people other than Sam and Dean, the hostages having been moved to Holding a while ago. It’s really strange to see Dr. Pearce’s staff sitting around with nothing to do; Sam doesn’t think he’s ever seen them this stationary before.

She looks up when they enter, and puts down the file she’s been scribbling in. “Hello,” she greets, before getting to her feet and walking off towards a corner of the warehouse that’s been sectioned off with heavy curtains. “X-ray’s back here,” she tells them, pulling back the lead-lined curtains just enough to let them all in. “Thanks for the contrast medium, by the way, Dean.”

Dean just nods. It goes unspoken yet clear that he didn’t do it for her – he did it for Sam.

“Okay, you know how this goes, right?” she asks, directing Sam over to sit down on an examination table. “I’m going to inject the contrast medium, give it some time to get to your heart, and then I’m going to X-ray your chest. Roll up your sleeve.”

Sam nods at her and does as told. Dean comes to stand next to him, leaning against the examination table, quietly and analytically taking in every single thing in this section, from the X-ray machine to the table against the wall that’s got what Sam assumes are developer and fixer on it. He shifts his gaze to Dr. Pearce when she approaches Sam with a syringe, and does not take his eyes off her for the length of time it takes for her to find a vein and inject the contrast medium into it. His eyes follow her even as she disposes of the syringe and then takes a chair.

“Something on my face?” she asks finally.

Dean does not answer immediately. His expression is shuttered. “No,” he says in the end.

“Then why the staring?” she demands.

Dean just shrugs, and turns away from her as if she might as well not be there for all he cares. Sam knows that’s not the case, knows they have a healthy mutual respect for each other – but right now, all Dean can think of is the fact that there might be something wrong with his little brother, and Sam knows that’s what’s causing him to act so oddly.

“Hey,” he says, voice low, moving his fingers just slightly so that they brush against Dean’s forearm, where his sleeve is pushed up to his elbow.

“Hey yourself,” Dean replies, shifting just a little closer.

“I’m okay,” Sam tells him quietly.

“I know.” Dean’s voice is terse, and he doesn’t look Sam in the eyes as he says it, and Sam understands that Dean is not just afraid – Dean is  _ terrified _ .

“I’m not going anywhere,” he whispers.

“I know,” Dean repeats, and still does not look at his brother.

Dr. Pearce has been doing them the favor of pretending she can’t hear them, but now she clears her throat, drawing their attention back towards her, and stands, saying, “Okay, Sam, I’m going to X-ray you now. Dean, you’re going to have step away. I’d prefer it if you went outside, actually, the radiation—”

“No,” Dean says at once. “I’m not going anywhere.”

From her expression it’s clear she wants to argue, but one look at Dean’s stony, determined expression, and she changes her mind. “Fine,” she says. It’s not snappish, but close enough to it that Sam can tell she’s losing patience. “Can you at least stand down, or is five meters too much distance from Sam for you to handle?” 

“Doc,” begins Dean warningly, but Sam cuts him off before he can say something that will instigate a fight.

“Just a couple minutes, Dean,” he says bracingly. “I’m right here.”

Dean looks to him, then to Dr. Pearce, and lets out a bitter scoff before taking the chair that she’s just vacated. She appears satisfied at that and then goes over to Sam, directing him to stand facing the x-ray sensor and lift his arms. “Hold your breath when I tell you to,” she instructs, and goes behind a lead-shielded area where the controls for the machine are located.

Sam does as he’s told, well-aware of Dean’s eyes on his back. Sure enough it’s only really a couple minutes and then they’re done, Dr. Pearce telling them she’ll inform them once she’s got the X-ray developed and has gotten a chance to look at it. Sam’s the one who responds to her, nodding and thanking her where appropriate, while Dean stands next to him, sullen and quiet.

“Dude,” Sam says the minute they’re out of Medical. “Dean—”

He doesn’t have the chance to say more; Dean moves so quickly that Sam doesn’t even realize something’s happened until he’s pinned to the wall of the warehouse, Dean’s body pressed to his, forearm against his upper chest.

“Dude what the  _ hell _ —”

“What am I going to do if something happens to you, huh?” Dean interrupts, and he sounds desperate, almost half-crazed. “Huh, Sammy? What if something’s wrong, something I can’t fix? What do I do then?”

“Dean—” Sam begins, but the look in his brother’s eyes stops him in his tracks. Dean looks  _ haunted _ , and the way his eyes go over Sam’s chest down to his waist and back up, Sam just knows he’s mentally counting every single scar on Sam’s body, every single thing that he considers a personal failure because he thinks that nothing should ever happen to Sam while he’s alive. And it doesn’t even seem to matter to him how illogical that thought is, considering who they are and the lives they’ve lived.

“You don’t have to say anything,” Dean says eventually, and lets his arm fall to his side. He doesn’t move his body, though, and they remain standing like that by the side of the warehouse, Sam with his back to it and Dean keeping him in place. 

“I’m—” 

But Dean’s not in the mood to let him speak, it seems, and for once Sam is actually grateful for it – he really has no fucking idea what to say, what he could possibly promise his brother, or use to assure him. He’s got absolutely  _ nothing _ .

“I just can’t lose you,” Dean says finally, and looks away from Sam, dropping his gaze to where the tattoo is on Sam’s chest, as if he can see it through Sam’s shirt. “Okay, Sam? I can’t lose you.” Almost as if unaware of it, Dean raises his arm again and presses his palm flat over Sam’s heart, as if needing physical proof that Sam’s alive.

“I know,” Sam says softly, and presses his own palm over Dean’s. “I know. You won’t.”

“You can’t promise that,” Dean says quietly, and Sam finds he has no answer to that. “It’s fine, though,” his brother adds. “I’m not expecting you to. I just want you to know. I can’t lose you.”

There is a lot that’s unspoken in that sentence, a lot to untangle from everything Dean’s feeling and not saying, and yet Sam gets it immediately, because in this regard, him and Dean are one and the same. It doesn’t matter how well the op goes tomorrow; if there is something wrong with Sam that can’t be fixed, then that’s going to be the last straw for Dean. They have followed each other around their whole lives, to literal Hell and back, and Heaven too, and this time is going to be no different.

And Sam wants to rail, he wants to shout at Dean, scream at him and make him stop, do  _ something _ to erase that look in his eyes, but he can’t. He’s many things, but a hypocrite is not one of them.

“I know,” he repeats in the end, and tries to ignore how it sounds so final. “I know, Dean.”

Dean looks down at their joined hands, and then up at Sam, searching his face. Whatever he finds there, it seems to settle him some – his whole body relaxes minutely, and something seems to loosen inside him, and he lets go of Sam and takes a step back, and says, “Okay, Sammy. Yeah. Okay,” in response to everything that Sam means but is not saying.

And that’s the song they’ve danced to their whole lives, thinks Sam as they resume the walk back to Residential as if nothing’s happened. The stage they’re on has changed, but, to quote Dean’s old records that Sam suddenly misses with an aching ferocity – the song remains the same.

Dinner that night is a tense affair. Dean refuses to leave Sam alone for longer than three seconds, and it seems Cas has picked up on the nervous tension as well; he takes up a spot on Sam’s other side and sticks to him like glue throughout the evening. Benny, who’s exhausted from lack of sleep due to having to adjust to human sleep schedules, sits across from the three of them at dinner and gives them a questioning look, but doesn’t say anything about it.

“So tomorrow we’re gonna be free, huh,” he says instead, taking a drag from his cup.

“One way or another, yes,” Castiel replies, way too casually considering how ominous he sounds.

“You guys ready?” Sam asks quietly. It still feels like speaking at a normal value is going to somehow disturb something. It doesn’t make sense inside his head either, but he has no idea how else to explain it even to himself.

“As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess,” Benny says. “What about you, Sam? You doin’ okay?”

“I’m fine,” Sam answers, and finds he means it. Anyone else and he would have lied, or deflected, but Benny’s seen him at his worst, broken down and powerless, and Benny deserves the truth now. It’s still kind of bizarre to Sam, how they’ve grown to genuinely care about each other, but in this life, friends are rare to come by and so he’s not about to complain.

“He for real?” Benny asks Dean, as if not sure if he should believe Sam.

“Yes,” Sam answers, annoyed. Dean doesn’t say anything.

“Dean?” Benny questions.

“Leave it,” Dean says.

Benny and Cas both turn to Sam askance, and Sam just grimaces at them and mouths “let it go.” Cas just sighs, but Benny frowns, and later on corners Sam just as they’re all leaving the mess.

“Sam,” he says. “Can we talk?”

Dean pauses.

“Yeah,” Sam answers quickly. “Dean, you and Cas go on, I’ll be there in a few minutes.” Dean still looks uncertain, hovering, brow furrowed, so Sam gives him a quick smile and adds, “It’s  _ Benny _ , Dean. I’m gonna be fine.”

“Didn’t say you wouldn’t be,” Dean mutters, but seems to have relaxed some anyway. “Come on, Cas, let’s go, I’ve got some stuff I wanted to ask you about tomorrow, anyway.”

Benny waits till they’re out of earshot, and then turns back to Sam. “What’s goin’ on?” he asks quietly, making sure no one else is listening in. “And don’t say nothing is,” he adds.

“Wasn’t gonna,” Sam protests, and then caves in at the unimpressed look Benny gives him. “Okay, fine, maybe I was.”

“I know you too well by now, sugar,” drawls Benny.

“Sugar?” Sam questions, raising an eyebrow.

“Don’t change the subject,” Benny counters.

“Fine,” sighs Sam. “I’ve been having these chest pains. I thought it was just anxiety, but uh, I had a real bad attack a couple nights back. Doc thought it must be my heart, so she had me x-rayed today and said she’ll let me know what it is once she figures it out.”

Benny’s frown deepens as he takes in what Sam’s saying. “You think it might be something they did to you?” he asks after a moment or so.

“I don’t know,” Sam tells him. “But I think so, yeah.”

Benny swears under his breath. “If I see even  _ one _ of them—”

“I’m okay,” Sam says hurriedly, a little unnerved by Benny’s vehement reaction. “Really, Benny, I’m fine—”

“Don’t give me that shit,” sighs Benny. “Look,” he goes on before Sam can say anything, “just – just let me know what happens, all right? And I know I can’t convince you not to come with us tomorrow—”

“Don’t even try,” Sam interrupts firmly.

“Wasn’t gonna,” Benny replies with a wry smile. “Look, Sam, just be careful, all right? You didn’t survive all that shit just to drop dead of a heart attack or something.”

“That’s not gonna happen,” snorts Sam. “But thanks for the concern, I guess?”

“Yeah,” says Benny after a slightly awkward pause. “Okay. Right, so my sleep schedule’s screwed, but I’ll see if I can catch a nap anyway before tomorrow. See you in the mornin’, Sam.”

“Where are you gonna sleep?” Sam asks.

Benny shrugs nonchalantly. “I’ll figure somethin’ out. You go on before your brother comes out and kills me for keeping you out past your curfew.” He grins, like he’s cracked the world’s funniest joke.

Sam just rolls his eyes. “Real funny, Benny,” he says deadpan.

“I’m a riot,” Benny grins, and then gives him a light shove. “Now  _ go _ .”

Sam feels Benny’s eyes on him all the way to Dean’s door, and pretends he doesn’t notice how Benny doesn’t move from his spot until he’s made sure Sam’s with Dean. It irks him a little, the lot of them treating him like a child that needs to be sheltered, but the logical part of him understands it. Benny’s spent eleven months with him, seen him tortured and broken down and experimented on before finally being stabbed in the gut moments before  being rescued. Dean and Cas have had to deal with not knowing where he is for the same amount of time, not even knowing if he’s alive, and now all of them are afraid that there’s something wrong with him that they can’t do anything about. He can understand their concern, he really can. He just wishes they weren’t so paternalistic about it.

“Everything all right?” Dean asks him once he’s stepped inside their room and closed the door.

“Yeah, Benny just wanted to know if I’m okay,” Sam tells him, sitting down on the bed and taking off his shoes. Dean’s already under the sheets, sitting up with his back against the headboard and his eyes not leaving Sam.

“Right,” he says. “Okay.”

“Where’s Cas?” Sam asks, putting his socks inside his shoes and then getting under the covers, lying down.

Dean remains sitting. “Eh, he went off after we spoke. I think he’s double-checking the equipment and making sure everyone’s in bed.” He snorts. “He’d be a good mom.”

Sam grins at that. “Yeah, I can see that, honestly.”

There’s a comfortable silence for about a moment, and then Dean says, “All right, get some sleep, Sammy. Big day tomorrow.”

“Right,” says Sam. “You too, Dean.”

Dean waves him off. “Yeah, in a bit,” he says. “Goodnight, Sammy.”

“’Night, Dean.” 

They’re up at 0300, barely five hours after they went to bed. Sam hasn’t slept well, waking up every now and then for reasons he can’t determine, and Dean hasn’t slept at all. Still, he looks alert enough, sharp-eyed as always, and they get ready for the day in silence, putting on camo over their regular clothes and arming themselves with their guns and knives.

The room is empty when they’re done; Dean has put everything away in the Impala again, and Sam gets the message loud and clear – no matter what happens now, they won’t be coming back to this room. He does not comment on it, though, just returns Dean’s inquisitive expression with a nod, and together they step out of the room.

It’s bizarre how Residential this morning manages to be busy and yet completely silent. All around them, people are getting ready for the day, and yet no one speaks, so Sam doesn’t either, and he and Dean make the walk outside in absolute silence.

Sam’s expecting them to head to Command, and so it comes as a surprise when Dean grabs his arm and jerks him in another direction. “Where are we going?” he asks, voice hoarse from disuse.

“You’ll see,” is Dean’s short answer.

They walk for about ten minutes, getting further and further away from the complex, until they reach what looks to be an old hangar, rusty and deteriorating. Dean forces open a door in the side and they enter, Sam confused as all fuck and Dean not saying anything.

There is no light save for what comes in through the doorway, and Dean pulls his flashlight out and turns it on. Sam follows his lead, sweeping it around the inside of the hangar. There is nothing remarkable except for a bulky, shapeless form in a corner, which is what Dean begins walking towards.

Sam follows, and his breath catches in his throat when he gets close enough to make out its shape. “Is that—”

“Baby,” Dean replies, a note of pride and love in his voice, and Sam can’t help but smile in response as Dean grabs the tarp covering her with one hand and pulls it off, letting it fall by his feet.

She looks the same as always, imposing and intimidating and beautiful, and the catch in Sam’s throat becomes a lump. He takes a step closer and runs his hand over the roof, smiling so wide his face hurts, conscious of Dean’s gaze on him.

“Missed her?” he asks quietly.

“Oh, you don’t even know,” Sam replies with a wet laugh.

He can tell Dean’s been looking after her, going by the shine of her paint, the gleam of her windows. He can see it in his mind’s eye, Dean coming here when he needed time to himself, distracting himself from his fear and frustration by forcing himself to focus on his car. Looking after her, going over every inch, keeping her ready for when he found Sam again. And Sam  _ knows _ , without having to ask he knows that Dean hasn’t actually sat in her or driven her after he parked her here, because he refuses to get in that car without Sam by his side.

Something in Sam’s chest settles, some loss he hadn’t let himself acknowledge until now, and he takes a step back again so he can see the car, his eyes roaming over her from fender to gleaming fender. He hasn’t let himself think about the bunker too much, hasn’t let himself process the loss of yet another home, and yet he’s felt it acutely all the same, in the little moments where he’s had nothing to distract himself with. A feeling of terrible loss, of drifting, not having an anchor, nothing to tether him – and he can feel it dissolving, bit by bit, getting smaller with every second he looks at the Impala.

He may have lost the bunker, but he never lost his home.

“Hey,” says Dean quietly, and Sam realizes there are tears in his eyes. “You good?”

He gives his brother a watery smile, swipes at his eyes, and then goes to stand next to the front passenger door, waiting for Dean to unlock the car. “I’m good,” he says, and means it.

No one in Command looks like they slept well, except for Cas, who doesn’t sleep and so just looks the same as always. The air is loaded with tension, and Jackson keeps his sentences short and to the point as he goes over the plan for the final time. “We’ll head out by 0430,” he finishes. “Alex, I want everyone ready in a car by then. You and Raniya will ride with me. Cas, I want you with the newbies. Keep ‘em motivated, keep their shit together for them. Take Benny with you. Clear?”

Cas nods.

“Sam, Dean – where’re you boys gonna be?”

“Oh, we got our own ride,” Dean replies with a wide grin. “And  _ boy, _ is she a sweet one.”

“You’re taking your own car?” Alex asks, eyebrows raised.

“It’s rather noisy, isn’t it?” Raniya adds.

“No, it’s a good idea,” Jackson muses. “They’re known for that car. It’s part of their legend. I say bring it, let the Brits know we’re comin’. Show ‘em we ain’t done fightin’. And if that car don’t put the fear of God back into their smug asses, I dunno what will.”

Dean’s grin widens. “Now you’re speaking my language.”

Jackson returns his grin with a fond eye roll, and then checks his watch. “All right, it’s 0415,” he says. “You got fifteen minutes to do whatever y’all want, but I want y’all in your cars by 0430 sharp so we can roll out. Dismissed.”

The walls are bare, Sam notices as he stands from his chair. Looks like Alex has gotten all the weapons distributed and ready to go. He watches as Raniya takes Alex’s arm and the two of them head towards a Humvee, a keyring dangling from Alex’s fingers. Besides him, Cas murmurs a “See you later” to him and Dean, and goes off towards the door.

“Let’s go see Doc,” Dean says to Sam, voice low. “See if she’s got anything for us.”

“Nah,” comes Jackson’s voice from behind them, and they turn to find him standing there with his arms crossed. “I want you boys to get your car ready and coordinate with Alex, so that we can all set out together. I’ve gotta go see Doc anyway, so I’ll ask her about your X-ray results in the meanwhile and pass ‘em on to you.”

“Jackson, I think—” Dean begins, looking completely unconvinced, but is cut off.

“Wasn’t an offer, boy,” Jackson tells him. “I was  _ telling _ you. It’ll be a waste of time if you head down to Medical when I’m goin’ there too, and we’re hard-pressed for time. I’ll be back in ten, and I’ll tell you then.”

“Jackson,” Dean tries again.

“Don’t you trust me?” Jackson asks bluntly.

“No, of course I do,” Dean says at once. The second part of his sentence remains unsaid but hangs in the air between the three of them anyway –  _ but I don’t trust anyone with Sam. _

Jackson ignores it, and claps Dean on the shoulder kind of forcefully. “Then I don’t see the issue,” he says, and before Dean can reply he’s walking off, steps brisk and purposeful in the direction of the door.

“What a hardass,” Dean mutters once Jackson’s out of earshot. “C’mon then, Sammy, let’s go get this show on the road.”

There’s something off about this whole thing that Sam can’t quite put his finger on, but it’s driven from his mind the moment he sits inside the Impala. She smells the same as she always has, old leather and gunpowder and mixed, fading notes of Dean’s scent and Sam’s, both of them a part of her after all these years. It’s enough to bring tears to Sam’s eyes again, but he takes a few deep breaths and gets himself under control, running his hand reverently over the dashboard, drinking in the scent of the car.

Dean smiles at him as he takes his own seat and starts the car, and it’s open and light, and it reaches his eyes, and before Sam really think about it he leans in and rests his head on his brother’s shoulder, closes his eyes, and continues breathing, chest expanding with each inhalation. He feels Dean shift under him, and then Dean’s arm is around his shoulders, squeezing, and his chest rumbles when he chuckles, making Sam feel warm all over. “Feels like old times, huh?” he asks when Sam sits up and opens his eyes.

Sam returns his smile. “Feels like home,” he says softly.

Jackson stops by the Impala just before they set out. He stops for a moment to give her an appreciative once-over, before leaning in and resting his elbows in Dean’s open window. “Spoke to Doc,” he reports, and Sam’s heart jumps into his throat immediately. “She says your brother’s fine. Must’ve just been really bad anxiety.”

Dean’s reaction is physical and palpable – his whole body sags, eyes falling shut, and Sam can see the tension visibly drain from him. “Thank God,” he mutters fervently, sounding like he means for the first time in his life. “Oh, thank  _ God _ .” 

And then he’s grabbing Sam, pulling him closer and planting a rough kiss to his temple. “Don’t you ever scare me like that again,” he says hoarsely. “Y’hear, Sammy?”

“Didn’t do it on purpose,” Sam mutters, wiping his temple in an exaggerated motion as if he finds the whole thing gross instead of endearing.

Dean just grins at him, weak from relief, and shoves him back into place lightly. “You little bitch,” he says, and then turns to Jackson. “Thank you,” he tells him quietly.

“It’s no problem,” Jackson says shortly, and leans back, shoving his hands into his pockets. Sam’s never seen him do that before – Jackson usually carries himself in a militaristic manner, back always straight, gaze always direct and purposeful. He must be feeling more nervous than he’s letting on, thinks Sam.

“All right, let’s get going, then,” Jackson says after a moment, during which he looks between Sam and Dean with an unreadable expression on his face. “Got a long drive ahead o’ us.”

“Gotcha,” says Dean, and rolls up his window before turning to smile at Sam again. “God, Sammy,” is all he says, and it somehow conveys  _ everything _ .

So Sam smiles back, and tries to shake off the curl in his gut that says something’s not quite right here.

It’s an almost 24-hour drive without stopping – when stops for refueling, eating, and going to the bathroom are factored in, it becomes about a day and a half. Dean does the majority of the driving, only letting Sam have a turn when it’s been eighteen hours and he’s yawning so hard he can barely see the road. Sam, who’s caught some sleep soon after they set out, classic rock his lullaby, grins when Dean falls asleep almost immediately, head resting against the window.

They convene at an abandoned bar just before setting out on the last leg of the journey, just after dawn the next day. Benny looks refreshed, and Sam figures he must have slept too while Cas drove. Raniya and Alex are quietly discussing something in a corner, while Jackson sits by himself and looks contemplative, staring off into space. His hands are knotted on the table in front of him, and he looks like he’s about three seconds away from fidgeting.

“He okay?” Sam asks Dean quietly, accepting the sandwich Dean hands him.

Dean follows his gaze and looks over at Jackson, before turning back to his brother. “Must be nervous,” he says, biting into his own sandwich.

“He’s always like this when he’s nervous?”

“He’s never nervous,” Dean corrects. “Or, well, he never shows it.”

“So why now?” questions Sam.

“It’s kinda a big day, Sam,” Dean points out. “This is  _ it _ , you know. The final countdown, the endgame, whatever. It’s kind of a big deal for him. For all of us.”

“Yeah, I know,” says Sam after a moment of thought. “I guess.”

It’s Dean’s turn to drive again, and Sam settles into his place in the passenger seat, letting his body melt into the leather. He’s sleepy again, and figures now’s the best time to catch some Z’s – they’ll be at Hess’s base in a few more hours, and then who knows what’ll happen after that. But instead of resting his head against the window like he usually does, Sam leans into Dean’s side, rests his head on Dean’s shoulder again. He hasn’t really done this in years – it’s not a comfortable position for a man of Sam’s height – but it just feels right now. He feels like he’s allowed this, after an eternity away from his brother, away from his home.

Dean evidently agrees – he doesn’t comment, and instead just raises his arm so Sam will be more comfortable, and drapes it around Sam’s shoulders. “Want me to turn the music off?” he asks quietly.

“No, leave it,” Sam answers, closing his eyes. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Dean says. A moment later Sam feels fingers in his hair, and feels Dean’s chest vibrate as he hums along to the song that’s playing, and he smiles to himself. Despite everything that’s happened, and despite the uncertainty of their future, they’re all right, he thinks. 

They’re at Hess’s base just before noon, the day after they set out. So far it looks like Bevell’s intel is sound; the guards are exactly where she said they would be, and a team led by Cas takes them down easily. 

It’s quiet when they enter, and dark inside, but Sam knows this doesn’t mean Hess is unaware of their arrival. If he has to bet on it , he’d say she’s predicted them coming and has prepared herself accordingly, and whatever ease they think they have now is just meant to lull them into a false sense of security. He turns to Dean, wanting to convey his thoughts, but Dean seems to have arrived at the same conclusion — he looks grim, and nods at Sam when Sam looks at him.

“Trap?” Sam mouths at him anyway. 

“Probably,” Dean returns. 

Jackson’s divided them into squads — along with him and Raniya, Sam and Dean are Alpha; Cas and Benny and some of their recruits are Beta; while Alex and a team of their snipers are Gamma. The rest of the people have been put on perimeter detail as well as making sure the cars remain ready to go in case they need to make a quick getaway.

Right now Jackson is sending Gamma ahead, to take down any cameras and/or men they find, while Beta has been sent to the research facility side of the base to go rescue whoever they find there. Hess is Alpha’s — and she is Dean’s, because Sam knows his brother will not rest until he’s put a bullet in her himself.

“Clear,” comes Alex’s voice over the radio. 

“Copy,” answers Jackson, and gestures to them to follow him. 

Gamma has done a good job with the guards; they are lying on the ground when Alpha pass them by, all of them unconscious but not dead. There is worrying silence even now, and Sam is having trouble believing that it’s  _ this  _ easy to break into what’s supposed to be the most secure BMOL base in the country. The uneasy curl in his gut is back, and seems to get tighter with every passing moment. 

This research facility, like the rest of them, has three floors and a basement according to Dean’s blueprints. Beta is sweeping the basement and first floor and so Alpha and Gamma have taken the second and third. They clear the second floor uneventfully and have just started up the stairs to the third when Jackson’s radio crackles to life, startling them all. 

“Found hostages,” comes Cas’s voice. “We are taking care of it. Over.”

“Copy that,” Jackson returns. “We are on the third floor. Over.”

“Copy,” says Cas, and then there is quiet. 

The third floor is just as silent as the ones before it. It extends before them in a long, unlit hallway that culminates in a T-junction. They approach it, weapons at the ready, and are met with nothing but more unconscious bodies, courtesy of Gamma. Clearly Alex has a lot of prejudice to work out and they’re taking total advantage of the situation to do so. 

“We should split,” says Jackson when they reach the T-junction, just like Sam had predicted he would. “Raniya, you and Dean go left; Sam and I’ll go right.”

“I’m not leaving Sam,” begins Dean, but goes quiet at the look on Jackson’s face. 

“Dean, I am  _ not _ in the mood for your insubordination right now, son,” he growls, and for once, sounds truly angry instead of just irritated. 

Dean’s expression shifts to mirror Jackson’s. “I am  _ not _ leaving my brother,” he says, more emphatic this time. 

“You are gonna do what I tell you to,” Jackson snaps. “And you ain’t gonna bitch about it. Clear?”

“Are we really going to stand here and argue about this?” sighs Raniya, exasperated. “We’re wasting time.”

She’s right. Sam has no wish to be separated from his brother either, but he knows standing around and fighting about it is futile. But Jackson at the moment looks like he would rather chop his trigger finger off than back down on this, and Dean is visibly preparing to square up as well, and so it falls to Sam to come between them, his back to Jackson as he holds a hand out placatingly in his brother’s direction. “It’s okay, Dean,” he says softly.

“Yeah, Dean,” adds Jackson mockingly from behind him. “Listen to your brother.”

“Sam, I don’t like this,” Dean says, completely ignoring Jackson. “Something feels off.”

Jackson scoffs. “You’re just paranoid, Dean,” he taunts. “You’re so afraid of losing him again that you won’t trust anyone else with him. In case you’ve forgotten, son, we’re all on the same side here. And Sam ain’t a child, he’ll live if you’re not with him for like a fuckin’ half hour. So I’m tellin’ you for the final time —  _ back off.” _

“And  _ I’m _ telling  _ you _ for the final time, I’m not leaving him—”

“Boys?”

All for of them freeze. Sam’s heart stops in his chest for a long painful moment and then restarts even more painfully, the ache surrounding it returning with a vengeance. He’s almost afraid to turn, to look behind Jackson and  _ see _ , because that would make her  _ real _ —

“Mary,” says Jackson, and Sam can hear the smirk in his voice. “Lovely of you to join us.”

“Mom,” greets Dean frostily. 

“ _ That’s  _ your mom?” Raniya asks. “Whoa.”

Sam forces himself to relax his muscles a little, and takes a couple deep breaths before he turns around to face her. She’s standing in the middle of the left side of the T-junction, shotgun up and aimed at the group. She is exactly as he remembers her — bright green eyes in a kind face, blond hair falling to her shoulders in the waves Sam has inherited, lips upturned in a half-smile despite the circumstances of their meeting. “Sam,” she says, and she actually sounds like she loves him. “I am so happy to see you safe—”

“Don’t,” snarls Dean, moving to put himself between Sam and Mary. “Don’t you  _ dare _ —”

It’s Jackson who cuts to the chase, raising his gun and aiming it at Mary. “Where’s Hess?” he demands. 

She ignores him. “Sam, please listen to me,” she says, beseeching. “Sweetheart—”

“Stop that,” Sam says, and isn’t surprised at the tremor in his voice. “You knew, didn’t you? You  _ knew _ where I was, what they were doing to me, and you didn’t—”

“Sam,” she tries again. “Sammy, sweetheart—”

“You don’t get to call him that,” Dean says quietly. “Not anymore.”

“Can we leave the dramatics for later?” snaps Jackson. “Where is that bitch Hess? Quit stalling and tell us!”

“Stalling?” Mary repeats incredulously. “You think I’m stalling?”

“What else?” scoffs Jackson. 

“She’s not here,” Mary says. “She never was. Toni Bevell lied to you.”

“No she didn’t,” Dean says with absolute confidence.

“She did—” begins Mary half-heartedly, but then Jackson’s radio comes alive again. 

“We’ve found Hess,” says Cas, and Jackson gives Mary a grim look.

“Where?” he asks Cas. 

“She was hiding out in the basement,” Cas reports. “We subdued her guards and she came quietly after that. We have her restrained now, and my team is taking her out to our vehicle.”

“Good, I’ll deal with her later,” Jackson tells Cas. “Good work, Castiel. Over.” Then he turns to Mary again. “Bevell lied to us, huh?”

“Had to try,” says Mary casually. 

Sam’s heart  _ hurts.  _ This is the worst possible place to get an anxiety attack, in front of people he doesn’t trust to see him vulnerable, and Mary’s presence and demeanor are not helping matters at all. Inhaling long and slow, hoping to get himself under control while he still can, Sam takes a step closer to his brother. “Dean,” he murmurs. 

It takes Dean all of one second to realize what’s wrong. “Sammy, hey, breathe,” he orders, lowering his gun so he can place a hand on Sam’s chest over his heart. 

“What’s wrong with him?” asks Mary, and she sounds genuinely concerned, and her expression is so close to the one that Sam remembers. She looks like the mother he had wished for his whole life, the one he’d gotten to have briefly, the one that still cared about him and Dean and made them tomato rice soup and looked after them in her own way, and the pain in Sam’s chest is radiating now, spreading outwards, and there are tears standing in his eyes. 

“Sam?” Dean says, totally ignoring Mary. “Sammy?”

Sam reaches out with his free hand and scrabbles at Dean’s shirt, grabbing a fistful and holding on tight. “I can’t breathe—”

“Sam!” shouts Mary, and takes several steps towards him. 

“Stay back,” warns Jackson, but she shoves past both him and Raniya and comes to a stop about a foot away from her sons. 

“Dean, what’s happening to him?” she asks, alarmed. 

“Panic attack, he has them sometimes,” Dean answers tersely. “Get away from him, don’t crowd him—”

“Stop talking,” Raniya says abruptly, voice sharp and tense. “Now.”

“What the hell—” begins Jackson, but Raniya shushes him with a wave of her hand. 

“Quiet,” she orders. It’s the urgency of her tone more than her words that has everyone finally shutting up, Jackson and Mary frozen in place while Sam holds on to Dean and tries to breathe through the steadily rising pain. He feels cold and clammy, and despite that he’s sweating, and with each passing second it’s getting a little harder to draw breath. 

Raniya’s eyes are glowing in the dull light of the hallway, and both her hands are clawed; she is standing absolutely still, barely breathing, all of her focus concentrated on whatever it is that she can hear and no one else can. Once or twice Jackson opens his mouth to say something but is shushed with another wave of her clawed hand, and subsides grumpily into silence. Mary’s got her gaze fixed on Raniya and following every tiny movement of hers, and even Sam finds himself a little transfixed. 

Then Raniya inhales deeply, sampling the air, and says, voice loaded with tension, “Vampire.”

“What?” says Dean. “What do you mean, vampire?”

“Not ours,” Raniya clarifies. 

“We have a vampire?” Jackson asks, so surprised by this revelation he forgets to complain. 

Raniya ignores him. It seems to be the running theme of the day. “He smells feral,” she says, her voice low. “Must be one of the ones they were experimenting on. Cas and Benny must not have gotten them all.”

“He’s headed this way?” Sam asks, barely managing to keep his voice steady. 

Raniya nods. “Dean, you have your machete?”

“Yeah,” says Dean, putting his gun away and pulling it out, all single-handed — his other hand is still flat against Sam’s chest, the only thing anchoring Sam to reality right now. 

“Jackson,” Raniya says, and his head snaps up to look at her. “Jackson, I need you to take Sam outside, okay? Dean and I will handle the vampire, and we’ll follow you out.”

“What about her?” Jackson asks, jerking his head towards Mary. 

“Take her with you,” Raniya instructs after a contemplative moment. “Take her weapons and tie her hands behind her back. We can deal with her once we’re back at base.”

Mary looks at Jackson, and then at Raniya, her eyes shifting between them calculatingly. She must not like the odds, for she drops her gun and pulls out a knife from her boot before dropping that too, and says, “I’ll come quietly. No need to tie me up.”

“Do it anyway,” Raniya says, and Mary just sighs. 

“If you must.”

“We must,” Jackson tells her with a grin that’s more like a grimace, and grabs her arms to pull them behind her back. He’s not aggressive, exactly, but he’s not making any effort to be gentle, either, and Sam can’t help but frown at the careless treatment, and the way Mary winces when Jackson tightens her restraints. 

“Careful,” he says, hoarse. 

Jackson raises an eyebrow at Sam. “I know she’s your ma, but to me she’s just another bad guy, kiddo. Just another one of ‘em Brit bitches.”

“Don’t call her that,” snaps Dean. 

“I’m not even British,” Mary says mildly, seemingly unconcerned by the insult. 

“Dean, come on, we have to go,” Raniya says urgently. “I’d prefer to get to the vamp before it gets to us.”

“Sam—” begins Dean. 

Sam offers him a wavering smile and lightly shoves him, ignoring the way the movement sends stabbing pain throughout his arm. “Go, Dean,” he says. “I’ll wait outside.”

Dean still looks uncertain.

“ _ Go _ ,” Sam repeats. “Before we all get eaten.”

His brother snorts at that, even though it’s not meant to be funny at all. He gives Sam one long, searching look, and then says, “See you in a few, then, Sammy.”

Sam nods at him, and lets go of his shirt to push himself off the wall he’s been leaning against. “Come on,” he says to Jackson, who’s waiting with Mary. 

They hear the vampire on their way out, even though they don’t see it, and a few seconds later the vampire’s roar is followed by an answering one from Raniya. Sam stops in his tracks, looks nervously towards the direction they’ve just come from, as if by focusing hard enough he can see through the walls and make sure that Dean’s okay.

“Your brother’s  _ fine _ ,” Jackson bitches, having identified the look on Sam’s face correctly. He grabs Sam’s arm and pulls him after himself a little roughly, ignoring the sound of pain Sam lets out. “Come on, we don’t got a lot of time—”

“A real Mr. Rogers, isn’t he,” Mary mutters to Sam.

Sam just grimaces and shakes his head.

“Castiel,” Jackson says into his radio, and Sam and Mary both turn their attention there. “I’m coming out, and I’ve got Sam and Mary Winchester with me. Meet us outside, over.”

“Copy,” comes Cas’s voice a second later. “Where is Dean? Over.”

“Him and Raniya are takin’ care of a feral vampire that’s run into us,” Jackson explains. “You must’ve missed it. Report on Hess? Over.”

“Still restrained,” Cas replies. “Had to gag her, though, she would not stop talking, over.”

“Okay, good,” barks Jackson. “We’re on our way. Over and out.”

They move on in silence, the sounds of the fighting fading out the further they go. They’re down on the second floor when Mary takes a step closer to Sam, and asks, “Are you all right, Sam?”

“I’m fine,” Sam answers, and manages to raise an arm to wipe the sweat off his brow.

“You don’t look it,” she says, not unkindly.

Sam lets out a short, bitter laugh. “Come on,” he mutters.

“Sam,” Mary says, and there’s something in her tone that makes him look up into her eyes. “Sam, I…” She sighs, looks away, like she’s not quite sure what she wants to say.

Sam does, though. In some twisted, strange way, he gets it. “You thought you were doing the right thing.”

“Yes,” she says. “And… and I wanted to make a safer world, you know? For you and Dean. I – I never wanted my sons to grow up to be hunters, Sam. I wanted you to be  _ happy _ , to not be so alone, and—”

“But we  _ were _ happy,” Sam interjects. “Yeah, life wasn’t perfect, but Mom, we had you back! And – and we’d only ever really had each other our whole lives, so it’s not like we were  _ alone _ , but—” 

“Well, you know what I mean!” Mary says.

“No, Mom, I really don’t!” Sam counters, and his heart twinges sharply in his chest. “I get having good intentions, and – and trying to do good, but Mom, you knew where I was this whole time! And you knew Dean was looking for me, and – and what they were  _ doing _ to me—”

“Sam,” Mary says sharply. “Sam,  _ breathe _ —”

“You knew what they were doing to me,” Sam accuses, and his free hand is clutched over his chest now. “You  _ knew _ , and you didn’t even  _ try _ —”

“What’s going on?” Jackson asks, stopping when he notices Mary and Sam are no longer following.

“Get Dean,” Mary tells him instead of answering.

“Dean’s with Raniya—”

“Get him  _ now _ !” she all but shouts.

“Mom—”

“Yeah, Sam—”

But he can’t continue. It feels like his heart has no space to beat inside his chest, and his fingers are curling in his own shirt as if trying to rip it away. Breathing is next to impossible and so is remaining upright, and Sam ends up collapsing against the nearest wall, barely keeping himself standing. If he could force his fingers under his own sternum, rip out his ribs just to give his heart some fucking  _ space _ , he would—

“Sam—” and now Mary sounds helpless, and even Jackson looks torn, standing over them as Mary kneels next to Sam. She looks like she wants nothing more than to reach out and touch him, but her hands are tied behind her back and Jackson looks like he’s in no mood to untie her, no matter the circumstances.

This is not an anxiety attack. This feels like the one he had that woke him up, the one that told him there was something wrong with im that went beyond anxiety – except it feels a thousand times worse, it feels like his heart is tearing itself apart, impaling itself on knives and daggers, and he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe, he’s going to  _ die _ , and he wants his brother, he wants—

“Mom—”

“I’m here, Sam, I’m here,” she says at once, and she sounds helpless and frustrated, and he wants her to put her arms around him, and tell him he’ll be all right—

“Shit,” curses Jackson loudly, and then again, “SHIT!” Both Mary and Sam ignore him, but he doesn’t stop. “FUCK!”

“Get Dean!” Mary tells him again, glaring up at him. “Are you listening to me—”

“Mom,” Sam gasps out, sliding down the wall until he’s slumped against it, “Mom don’t leave me—”

“I won’t, sweetheart, I’m right here,” she says at once, turning her focus back on him, and he wants to believe it, he wants to believe it  _ so bad _ —

“Don’t go, Mom, please, don’t go—”

“I’m not going anywhere—”

“Don’t let them hurt me,” he gasps out, and she’s blurring in his eyes now, his vision swimming, the room going out of focus – but he can still see how her face shutters at his words, how she looks pained, and immediately he regrets it. He didn’t mean to make her sad— “Sorry, I’m sorry,” he gasps out.

“Sam,” she says, and it sounds like her heart is breaking, and he didn’t mean to, he didn’t want to make her sad, he just wanted his mom—

“GET DEAN NOW, YOU ASSHOLE!” screams Mary, and Sam flinches. Is she angry? She seems angry, and he can’t figure out why—

But whoever she’s talking to doesn’t listen, because then she’s forcing herself up on to her feet, and shouting again, but he doesn’t know what she’s saying, it sounds all weird and twisted to his ears—

“Mom,” he tries again, barely loud enough to be heard, and everything hurts, he just wants his mom, and his brother—

And then he hears him, hears Dean shouting, sees him materialize in front of him and shove Jackson aside, kneeling down next to Sam, and his hands are callused on Sam’s face, and really warm, and he’s spattered in blood, and he’s saying, “Sam, Sammy, oh my God,  _ what’s happening _ —” 

“Dean,” Sam gasps out, both hands reaching for his brother, “Dean, I’m – I can’t breathe, it hurts—”

Dean drops the bloody machete he was holding. It drops the floor with a  _ clang _ , and then Dean’s arms are around Sam, pulling him in close, palm pressed over his heart. “Sammy, listen to me, okay? Listen—”

“What’s happening to him?” Mary asks desperately. “Dean, what’s happening to him?”

“I don’t know!” Dean tells her, sounding just as desperate, and Sam doesn’t like it, doesn’t like hearing Dean be  _ afraid _ , not Dean, not his brave big brother—

“Get Castiel,” Mary orders Jackson. “Radio him right the fuck  _ now _ or I swear—”

“You’ll do what?” Jackson challenges.

“LISTEN TO HER!” roars Dean, and Sam makes a pained sound before he can stop himself.

“It’s just anxiety—” Jackson begins.

Dean moves so quick that Sam hasn’t even registered it until he no longer feels Dean’s hands on him. Instead Dean now has his gun drawn and pointed straight at Jackson. “Call. Cas.  _ Now _ . I will not hesitate to shoot you, Jackson, I swear to God.”

“Dean?” Sam asks weakly, and Dean turns back to him, albeit without moving his weapon from Jackson, who’s finally started speaking into his radio.

“Yeah Sammy?” he says, and he sounds so tender that it’s hard to believe he was threatening to shoot someone barely seconds ago.

“I don’t wanna die,” Sam whispers, struggling to keep his eyes locked with his brother’s. It feels important that he tell Dean something, but he can’t really find the words, can’t make his brain obey him. “But—”

“You’re not gonna die,” Dean interrupts him. “Okay, Sammy?” He runs his hand through Sam’s hair once, and then places it on his cheek. “You’re not gonna die. Just – just breathe with me, okay Sammy? Come on, in, yeah Sammy, that’s it kiddo, breathe out now—” 

It doesn’t help, it doesn’t work, but Sam tries anyway, tries for Dean’s sake, because his brother looks like he’s going to cry, and Sam doesn’t want him to. He hates when Dean cries, because Dean’s so brave, and he’s always looked out for Sam, and he doesn’t deserve to ever be upset.

“Don’t be sad,” Sam tells Dean. “Please.”

“I’m not sad, Sammy,” Dean says with a small smile, but he’s lying, because there are tears in his eyes. “Come on,  _ come on _ , where the fuck is Cas—”

“Here,” comes Cas’s voice somewhere above them, and Sam doesn’t even have the energy to look up. All he can focus on is Dean, and Mary somewhere nearby, and he wants to close his eyes, and just rest for a minute—

“Sammy,  _ no _ , open your eyes—”

“Five minutes, D,” mumbles Sam.

“No!” barks Dean, and Sam finally obeys, opening his eyes to see tears beginning to fall from Dean’s eyes.

“Don’t cry, D,” Sam says, and tries to reach out, managing to put his hand on Dean’s face. “Please don’t cry—”

Dean lets go of his gun and puts his hand over Sam’s, turning his face into it. “I’m not—Cas, Cas,  _ heal _ him—”

“Dean, I  _ can’t _ ,” Cas says, and he sounds torn, and he’s kneeling so Sam can see him too, and crap, he looks real sad too. “I don’t have any powers left.”

“Try!” Dean says harshly. “Cas, please, I’m  _ begging _ you—”

“Dean—”

“It’s Sammy,” says Dean, and his voice breaks on his brother’s name. “Cas, it’s Sammy, and I just got him back, I can’t lose him again,  _ please _ , Cas—”

Cas looks conflicted for a moment, and then seems to cave. “Okay, Dean,” he murmurs. “I’ll try.” And then he gently nudges Dean’s hand away from Sam’s face, and places his own over Sam’s forehead. “I can’t guarantee it will work, but I will try.”

“Okay,” Dean says, and shifts his hand to rest it over Sam’s chest. His other one is still holding Sam’s hand to his own face. “Sammy, you hang in there, okay? Cas is gonna fix it. You’ll be good as new, Sammy, you’ll be just fine— Cas, why is nothing  _ happening _ —”

“Let me focus, Dean,” Cas says, firm but not unkind.

“Dean,” Sam whispers. It’s getting really hard to stay awake now, and he knows Dean told him not to close his eyes, but he can’t help it. Everything hurts so much, and he is so tired, and he just needs to sleep. Just for a little while. Until the pain goes away.

“Yeah Sammy?” Dean whispers.

Sam tries his best to smile at him. From the shaky smile that Dean gives him, he must succeed. “Gonna nap,” he tells his brother. “Jus’ a bit. ‘Night, Dean.” He closes his eyes.

“Sam,  _ no _ ,” Dean says, and his voice is coarse from desperation, hand fisting in Sam’s shirt. “Cas—”

And then  _ something _ goes through Sam, something freezing cold, and he gasps, chest burning, eyes flying open. Cas is still kneeling over him, and Sam bucks, almost throwing him off, but Dean’s hand on his chest keeps him in place, even though Dean looks like he’s freaking out. Sam catches a glimpse of his own hand on Dean’s face, and his veins are outlined in jet black, like his bloodstream’s been filled with the vilest kind of venom.

“What’s happening to him?” Mary asks, somewhere above them, and she sounds like she’s crying. “Dean, Cas, what’s going on—”

“He’s healing,” Cas says, and sounds stunned. “He’s – it’s working.”

But it’s  _ cold _ , and it still hurts, and Sam wants to scream, it’s burning through his veins, it’s freezing his heart – and yet it feels pure, somehow, otherworldly, ethereal, and for a moment Sam feels completely weightless, like he’d float away if it wasn’t for Dean holding on to him.

“What the fuck,” whispers Jackson, somewhere out of sight.

And then everything ebbs away, all of the something that had been working its way through him, and with it goes the crushing agony, and Sam’s lungs expand suddenly and he gasps again, gulping in as much air as he can, his heart going a mile a minute but miraculously steady, painless.

“Dean?” he says, and watches as the blackness fades from his veins. “Dean, what—”

But before he can finish talking Dean is moving in, and he pulls Sam to him in a bone-crushing hug, almost knocking the air from his lungs again but in a way that’s familiar and well-worn and welcome. “God, Sammy,” he chokes out, and then he’s crying, his tears wetting Sam’s hair and the side of his face.

“Cas healed me,” Sam says, voice filled with wonder. “Cas, you  _ healed _ me.” And it’s permanent; he can feel it, can feel his body going back to the way it’s supposed to be, the way it was before he’d been taken – sure, and resilient, and steadfast.

“I did,” Cas replies, and he sounds just as awed, looking down at his hands like he can’t quite believe it.

“Scared me,” Dean says, pulling apart just a little and resting his forehead against Sam’s. “Scared me to death, Sammy—”

“Didn’t do it on purpose,” Sam says, and smiles a little at his brother.

Dean lets out a wet laugh, and closes his eyes for just a moment. “Yeah kiddo, I know.”

“As touching as this is,” says Jackson, and Sam feels Dean freeze against him, “we do still havta leave this place, you know.”

“Jackson,” sighs Castiel, exasperated. He stands, and says, “Let them have a minute, Sam nearly just died—”

“You’re not surprised, are you,” Mary says.

“What do you mean?” Jackson asks gruffly.

“You’re not surprised this happened,” Mary clarifies, and both Sam and Dean look up at her. Her eyes are red and face blotchy from tears, but she looks determined, and angrier than Sam’s ever seen her. “That’s why you wouldn’t radio for help.”

“Mom, what are you—” Dean begins, but then falls silent suddenly, and Sam knows he’s arrived at the same conclusion that Sam himself just has.

Offering to speak to Doc on their behalf, casually telling them that Sam’s okay when he knew they’d have no way to verify it before they left; his fidgety and nervous demeanor, when Dean had said Jackson never showed his nerves; his insistence on separating Sam and Dean on the op, as if he knew that Dean would drop everything if Sam showed even the slightest sign of distress, which also explained why he didn’t call Dean when Mary first told him, and God, it all makes sense, it all  _ fits _ , and Sam feels sick to his stomach in a way that has nothing to do with illness.

“You know what was wrong with me,” he says quietly, and lets go of Dean so he can get to his feet. He’s still a little unsteady, but he grabs the wall for support and manages to stand without swaying too much. “You’ve known since we left.”

Dean’s on his feet too, and his expression has gone flat, like he’s just shut the window to his soul and sealed it tight. “You lied to us,” he says, and his voice is even, not a hint of a tremor or any emotion at all.

Jackson looks between Sam, Dean, Mary, and Cas, and then sighs. “I had to,” he says.

“Why?” demands Cas.

Jackson looks Sam in the eye before answering. “Dr. Pearce said you got somethin’ called spontaneous coronary artery dissection,” he tells him. “It took her a while to get what it was, she said, ‘cause it’s rare, but she was pretty sure that’s what it was. She said not to let you go, that you had to avoid exertion, and stress, and so you hadta stay back. She figured it was probably a side effect of whatever the Brits did to you.”

“Still haven’t answered the question,” Dean says, and his voice reminds Sam of how he sounded when they interrogated Toni.

“If he stayed back, you wouldn’ta come either,” Jackson says, looking at Dean. “And I needed you two here with me. You’re the most experienced hunters here, and you’ve done this kinda thing before. I knew the mission would fail without you, so I lied.”

“And if Sam had died?” demands Mary.

Jackson shrugs. “Collateral damage,” he says. “Happens all the time, don’t it? But we’d have gotten Hess, and that’s what the endgame was, wasn’t it?”

“Do our lives really mean that little to you?” Cas asks.

“Compared to getting that Brit bitch?” Jackson says with a sneer. “Hell, yeah.”

“Well, you made a mistake,” Dean says, and his lips stretch, not in a smile but in a terrifying rictus that Sam has never seen on him before, not even when he’d been a demon.

“I played the odds,” Jackson corrects, and raises his gun. “Look, I don’t wanna fight any of y’all, and it’s all worked out anyway, right, so let’s just go home—”

“It’s not that simple,” Dean interjects. “Come on, Jackson, you’ve known me a long time. Since I was a kid. You know I only really got one rule.” That stone-cold grin widens. “You don’t fuck with Sammy.”

He raises his own gun, and Sam’s hand reaches for his own as well, even as Castiel says, “Jackson,  _ don’t _ —”

“I don’t want to,” Jackson says, gun aimed square between Dean’s eyes. “But I’ll do it if I havta, if I feel you’re standin’ in my way—”

“I think you’ve got this whole situation turned around,” Dean says. “You’re in my way, Jackson. And you fucked with Sammy. Do you really think you get to walk away now?”

“Don’t,” says Jackson, and his finger tightens minutely on the trigger. “Dean, don’t make me do this—”

“Ain’t making you do anything, Jackson,” Dean reminds him. He sounds so casual about the whole affair, so anticipative of the violence promised, that Sam can’t help but glance down at his right arm and make sure the skin there is unmarked.

“Let’s all walk away,” says Jackson.

“I think we both know that’s not going to happen,” Dean answers. “We trusted you, Jackson.  _ I  _ trusted you. And you know what? If it had just been me you screwed over, I might have not cared so much. But Sam?” His voice lowers dangerously. “My little brother? No fucking way, Jackson. And what you did to him? I almost lost him because of you. I’ve done far worse to scarier things than you for far less.”

Instead of answering Jackson takes a step backward. Immediately Dean takes two steps forward, closing the distance between them. “You don’t get to walk away from this, Jackson,” Dean reminds him.

“I swear, I will shoot you,” Jackson warns him, finger tightening some more on the trigger.

“You try it, see what happens,” Sam says, voice quiet but no less dangerous for it.

“I’m not afraid of you,” Jackson tells them, but now his resolve is failing, translated into his shaking voice and trembling hands.

And then a lot of things happen in a very short time.

There is a loud thumping noise from somewhere below them, followed by a shout and then a  _ bang _ , and Sam’s heart goes absolutely still from sheer terror, because Jackson’s gun had been pointed at Dean, and now it’s on the floor, and Dean is—

But then his brother moves, and he’s  _ alive _ , and Sam’s heart restarts again, even as his body has already begun to move in Jackson’s direction. The attack – myocardial infarction, he assumes – has taken a lot out of him, has left him with only a fraction of his normal strength, but adrenaline combined with betrayal and fury serves to more than make up for it, and he takes Jackson down easily, grabbing his jacket and ripping it off him before pressing his knee into Jackson’s back and restraining his arms with his own jacket. 

Then he hears a roar that sounds a lot like Raniya, except she sounds a lot closer to them than she was before, and then, moments later, she appears around a corner, bleeding and limping, but mostly unharmed. “Fucking hell,” she’s snarling, “there was another one, I can’t believe I missed—”

And then she goes absolutely silent, as does everything else.

Mary Winchester is bleeding out on the ground. 

“M—Mom?” Sam’s voice is shaking. His grip on Jackson slackens a little, but Jackson doesn’t move; he seems to be in shock too.

“What the hell happened?” asks Raniya.

“Fuck that,” says Dean, and falls to his knees next to Mary. Sam shoves Jackson towards Raniya and follows suit, extending a shaking hand towards his mother.

She’s bleeding out from her belly, where her stomach should be, and she’s got her hands over the wound in a vain effort to stem the flow, but it’s not working; her blood is dribbling out scarlet over her fingers, and Dean’s got his hands over hers now, and Sam presses his own over his brother’s.

“Cas,” says Dean, “Cas, can you—”

“I don’t have any Grace left,” Cas says before Dean can finish, and he sounds wrecked. “Dean, I’m sorry, I can’t—”

“Sam,” Dean says desperately, “Sam, your jacket—”

“Right—” Sam takes his hands off Mary and shrugs out of his jacket, balling it up and handing it to Dean. Dean gently moves Mary’s hands aside and then pressed the jacket to the wound, where it soaks up blood at an alarming rate.

“Boys,” says Mary, and they both turn to look at her. Her face is pale from the blood loss, and she’s grimacing in pain, lips coated red, but when she looks at them she manages to smile.

“Yeah, Mom,” says Dean at once, and his voice isn’t breaking, but it’s a close thing.

“It’s not gonna work,” she says, tapping a bloody finger against Sam’s jacket.

“No, Mom, c’mon,” Sam begins.

“Sam,” she says. “It’s not going to work.”

“You can’t just  _ say _ that!” Dean protests. “You can’t just say things like that, you can’t just  _ leave  _ us again and again—”

“I’m sorry,” she says, and she sounds a little breathless now. “I’m sorry—” She cuts herself off, grimacing.

“Mom, you’ve got to hang in there,” Sam pleads, grabbing one of her hands in both of his. “Mom,  _ please _ —” It doesn’t matter what she’s done, it doesn’t matter what her sons have been through because of her. She’s their  _ Mom _ , and Sam can’t stop loving her no matter what, and he can’t ever stop wanting her.

“Sam, there’s no point,” she says gently.

“How can you just  _ say _ that?” Dean asks desperately. “You don’t get to do this to us, okay—”

“I’m sorry,” she says again, and coughs. More blood dribbles out of the corner of her mouth and rolls down her face; the sight of it makes Sam sick to his stomach. “I was just trying – to make things better,” she whispers. “For you two.”

“I know,” Sam says. “I know, Mom—”

“We forgive you,” Dean says. “We do, Mom, I swear, but you’ve got to try, okay? You’re going to make it—”

“I’m so proud of you,” she interrupts, and smiles. It lights up her eyes despite the fact that there’s not much left in them anymore. “Both of you.” She gently releases her hand from Sam’s and touches his face with bloody fingers, and then Dean’s. “My brave, brave boys.”

“Mom,” says Dean, and his voice finally breaks.

“You’ll be fine,” Mary says. “You two have each other. You don’t need me, not really—”

“We  _ always  _ will,” Sam cuts in, grabbing her hand again so he can squeeze it. It alarms him how cold her fingers are.

She just smiles sadly at him, and then inhales shakily. “You two take care of each other, okay?”

“ _ Mom _ —” Dean almost shouts, and there are tears falling from his eyes again. Sam’s well-aware of how close to tears he is himself – his whole face feels warm, flushed, and his throat has long-since closed up, constricting his voice.

“I love you boys,” Mary says, her smile shifting into something realer, softer and gentler. “My sweet boys.”

“Mom, no,” Sam begins, and then stops when he feels her grip on his hand go slack. “Mom?” he tries, reaching out with his other hand to shake her. “Mom!”

She doesn’t respond. Sam shifts his hand around hers so he can feel her pulse, and finds – nothing. Her chest has stopped rising and falling.

She’s gone.

“No,” Sam gasps out. “Mom—” He looks up at Dean, desperate, but Dean’s expression has gone flat. His hands on Mary’s body are no longer shaking, and there are no more tears, though his eyes are still red. It scares Sam, scares him more than having Dean cry does.

“Dean?” he says softly, and hates how wet his voice sounds.

Instead of replying Dean gets to his feet, slowly, painstakingly, but full of purpose. He steps away from Mary’s still body and turns towards where Raniya is standing with her hand gripping Jackson’s elbow loosely.

“You did this,” he says, voice low, dangerous.

“Did what?” asks Raniya. “Dean—”

“All of it,” Dean tells her, not taking his eyes off Jackson. “You lied to me, and you hurt my family.” His voice maintains its even tone, with barely an inflection.

“I didn’t mean to,” Jackson says defensively. “Dean, it was an accident—”

It takes Sam a moment to realize what he means – the  _ bang _ he’d heard earlier, that had been Jackson’s gun. And instead of Dean, it hit Mary.

She’s gone.

“You  _ killed _ her,” Dean says coldly. “You son of a bitch, you killed her.”

Sam lets go of his mother’s hand and gets to his feet. “Dean,” he says again, unsteadily.

His brother doesn’t look at him. He’s got his gun in his hand again, though it’s pointing downwards, not aimed anywhere. His machete is still on the ground where he’d dropped it. “Cas,” he says without looking away from Jackson. “Cas, keep Sam back.”

Cas immediately takes a hold of Sam’s arm, and Sam wrenches it out of his grasp in the next second. “What are you doing?” he hisses at Cas.

“Dean said—” Cas begins.

“I heard him,” Sam cuts in.

“Dean, we can talk about this,” Jackson says, stepping away from Dean and closer to Raniya.

“What is  _ going _ on?” she wants to know.

“He lied to me,” Dean tells her. “Told me Sam’s all right and Doc’s cleared him to come on the op. Guess what.” Dean lets out a laugh so icy it makes goosebumps erupt along Sam’s arms. “Sam nearly died. My little brother nearly died because this shitbag  _ lied _ to me, and then he killed my mother.”

Raniya’s mouth falls open. “He – what?” She sounds stunned as she steps away from Jackson, shaking her head in disgust.

“Yeah,” says Dean with a scoff.

“Dean, put the gun down,” says Jackson. “It doesn’t have to be a fight—”

“No, you’re right, I don’t need the gun,” Dean agrees, before shoving it into Cas’s hands and then  _ launching _ himself at Jackson.

Dean’s fury is translated into every punch, every hit to Jackson’s ribcage and belly and face, and he can’t even defend himself because his hands are still restrained behind his back. Dean’s fists fly back and forth, and soon enough there is blood, and Jackson is spitting out blood and teeth in between attempts to speak, barely able to stay standing, and Cas watches with an appalled look on his face but makes no move to stop what’s happening.

“Dean!” Sam shouts. “Dean,  _ stop _ —”

Yeah, Jackson’s killed their mom, and for that he deserves to die painfully, but when the haze clears from Dean’s mind and he realizes he beat a defenseless man to death…but suddenly Sam’s not so sure anymore than Dean will regret it. The Dean from before would have, maybe. This Dean, this hardened version of his brother that’s filled with cold fury – Sam’s not sure he’ll feel  _ anything _ . And the worst part is that Dean’s not saying a word as he uses Jackson as a punching bag – he’s quiet as a grave, and every hit is surgical in its precision instead of the messy haphazard punches that would’ve come from impulsive rage. 

“Dean!”

“Sam, he killed Mom!” Dean says, punctuating each word with another hit to Jackson’s face. His knuckles have split open, his blood mixing in with Jackson’s, whose face is a bloody pulp now. He opens his mouth in another attempt to speak and Dean hits him straight in it, and Sam’s gut lurches when he sees Jackson’s teeth dangling loose from his gums.

“I know, Dean, I know,” Sam says, grabbing Dean’s arm to try to stop him. It doesn’t work. “You’ve got to stop—”

Dean wrenches his arm out of Sam’s grasp and hits Jackson again. He’s foregone bothering with Jackson’s torso completely and is instead concentrating his efforts on what’s left of Jackson’s face, and Sam can hear the nauseating  _ crunch _ of shattering bone with every hit. It’s a wonder there’s anything left of him for Dean to hit, honestly.

“Dean!” Sam shouts. “Dean,  _ please _ !”

“You almost died because of him, Sammy!” Dean says, but his fist stops in midair.

“Leave him here,” Sam suggests, taking his opportunity and grabbing Dean’s upper arm again. “Leave him here, and the rest of us can go back. He won’t survive long. Dean, he’s not – he’s not worth it.”

“Sam’s right,” Castiel says, but there is reluctance in his tone.

Raniya, whom neither of them had noticed leaving, returns with Alex and the rest of Gamma at her back. She inhales sharply when she sees Jackson slumped against the wall, kept upright only by Dean’s fist in his collar holding him up. “Dean,” she says. “Dean, what did you do?”

“Not enough,” Dean answers.

“You don’t have to do this,” Alex says.

“Shut your mouth,” snarls Dean.

“Dean, let go of him,” Sam says softly, sliding his hand down Dean’s arm to grip at his wrist. “Leave him, Dean. He’s not worth any of it.”

Dean looks at Jackson, who’s groaning weakly, and then at Sam, and then down at where Sam’s fingers are encircling his wrist. Blood is spattered over his face, not his own, and he looks – feral,  _ wild _ , out of control, and Sam can’t help but be irrationally afraid that Dean’s going to blink and his eyes are going to  turn black.

“Please,” he says. “Please, Dean.”

For a moment it looks like Dean’s not going to listen – the stone-cold look is back in his eyes, and he forcefully shakes Sam’s wrist off before drawing his arm back. Sam steps back on instinct, watching with a sinking heart as Dean punches Jackson in the middle of the face – but then he lets go of him and shakes out his fist, and steps back from him after kicking his slumped form hard in contempt.

Sam grabs him immediately, taking him by the shoulders and physically turning him away from Jackson. “Let’s leave,” he pleads. “Let’s just go, Dean.”

Dean raises his head, makes eye contact with Sam. His eyes are dull, but it’s still better than the absolute lack of soul from earlier. Sam’s not sure he’ll ever forget that. “Okay, Sammy,” he says, bringing his left hand up to put it around Sam’s wrist.

He squeezes Sam’s wrist once before letting go, and then turns to see Alex, Raniya, and all of Gamma staring at him. “Show’s over, folks,” he tells them sarcastically. “You can have this motherfucker back now.”

“Don’t want him,” Alex says, keeping their eyes averted from Jackson. “He can stay here. Eh, Raniya?”

“Fine by me,” she replies. “We can manage  _ just _ fine without him. Come on, Alex, let’s go make sure everyone’s ready to leave.”

It’s a thinly veiled excuse to give them some privacy, but Sam is grateful. He waits till they’ve all gone before getting back down on his knees next to Mary, where Dean is already situated, and then he just looks at her. Takes in her face, the softness of her skin, the blood-soaked waves of her hair, the laugh lines around her eyes and mouth. Her eyes are still open, a green as muted and dull as Dean’s, and the tremor in Sam’s hand returns as he reaches out and gently slides them closed.

Dean smooths away her hair from her forehead, and then carefully, gently, slides his arms under her body and cradles her to his chest. Without uttering a single word he gets to his feet, holding Mary close to his body, and begins the long, slow walk back.

For a moment it looks like Castiel is going to say something, but one look at Sam and he changes his mind, deciding instead to just close his eyes and grimace. Sam bites his lip, trying to keep himself together for just a few moments longer, and Castiel’s face crumples into worry and sympathy, and he reaches out a hand to squeeze Sam’s.

“I’m so sorry,” he says. “Sam, I’m so sorry.”

Sam just nods, and averts his gaze, unwilling to let Cas see the tears pooling in his eyes again. “Yeah,” he manages to say, and then takes off after Dean, letting his hand slip from Castiel’s.

They give her a funeral the same day at dusk, not far from the base. Sam builds the pyre while Dean cleans her up and wraps her body in white linen that Cas found in the research facility. Benny keeps everyone away and wisely stays away himself, clearly sensing that both Sam and Dean don’t really want company right now. When all the preparations have been made, Dean gently puts Mary’s body on top of the pyre, and Sam hands him the lighter fluid and a match.

“I’ll be waiting by the car,” Castiel murmurs to them, and retreats.

They watch, shoulder to shoulder, as the fire rises higher and higher. The heat is almost unbearable after just a few minutes, but neither of them make any move to step back. They just remain there, watching, their eyes dry and hearts heavy. There aren’t many tears left to cry. Sam’s sure it’ll hit much later, at probably the worst possible time, but for now they’re just quiet.

It’s a half-moon night, and the stars are shining up in the sky above them by the time the fire finally burns out. Sam is dead on his feet, and swaying from exhaustion, and the only thing that’s preventing him from falling over is Dean’s hand on his arm. Dean himself looks fatigued, and his head is bowed, as if the last few hours are literally weighing down upon him.

Cas is waiting by the car, just like he’s said, and when Sam and Dean are close enough he pulls both of them in for a hug. Sam feels Dean go a little stiff next to him, but it passes in a second and then Dean relaxes into the hug, even puts one arm around Cas and one around Sam.

None of them say a word; they stay like this for what could be hours but is probably just a minute or so. Sam rests his head against Castiel’s and closes his eyes, and next to him Dean’s got his hand fisted tightly in Castiel’s trenchcoat – which has survived against all odds – and just for a few moments, the two of them don’t have to face everything alone. 

Dean is the first to step away; he claps Cas twice on the back in his customary manner and gives him a strained smile, and then goes round the car so he can get into the driver’s seat. Sam stays in the hug a few seconds longer, lets himself be held up, and then gives Cas’s shoulders a squeeze before he separates. “Thank you,” he says softly, words almost carried away by the wind.

Castiel nods at him. “You are most welcome, Sam.” Then he pats Sam’s shoulder a little awkwardly, and gets into the back of the car. Sam follows suit, getting into the front, and closes the door after himself.

Benny joins them just as the engine’s done warming up. He just wordlessly slides into the backseat next to Castiel, just behind Dean, and says quietly, “Heard about your ma. I’m real sorry.”

“Thanks, Benny,” Sam says when it’s evident Dean will not speak.

Everyone else has left long ago, taking Hess with them; only the four of them have stayed behind. Raniya and Alex left without saying anything, clearly expecting that there will be plenty of time to speak once the four of them arrive back at base.

They sit there in total stillness for a few moments, and then Dean leans towards Sam, pulls out a map from the glove compartment, and turns on his flashlight.

“What do you need that for?” Cas asks. “You know the way back.”

“Just checkin’ something,” Dean murmurs. He studies the map for a few more seconds and then folds it up, putting it back in, and switches his flashlight off. “All right. Let’s get the hell outta Dodge.” He doesn’t sound quite like his old self yet, but he’s making an effort, and to Sam, that’s what counts.

Sam doesn’t realize he’s fallen asleep until the car stops and he jerks awake. They’re at a gas station, and the driver’s seat is empty. So is the backseat, he realizes a second later.

Then he sees Dean just outside his window, absently staring at the gas pump in his hands, and he looks  _ exhausted _ . Sam checks his watch, and blinks in surprise when he realizes they’ve been on the road for about five hours. He hadn’t even  _ realized _ .

The left back door opens and Sam jumps, relaxing only when he sees it’s Cas, holding bags of snacks and water that he must have gotten from the gas station. He smiles when he sees Sam. “How are you feeling?” he asks.

“Okay,” Sam says. “I think. Still tired, mostly.”

“Perfectly understandable,” Cas says, sitting and closing the door after himself.

Dean finishes refueling and joins them in the car. “Heya, Sammy,” he says, and offers him a hint of a smile.

Sam returns it. “Hey,” he says. “Okay?”

Dean nods. “I will be,” he says, and reaches out to muss Sam’s hair, probably worsening his no doubt already awful bedhead. “You?”

“Same,” says Sam, and flattens his hair back as much as he can.

“You should get some more rest,” Dean tells him.

“So should you,” Sam counters.

Benny chooses that moment to open Sam’s door and say, “Lemme drive, Dean. Both of you need some Z’s.”

Dean looks hesitant. “You gonna be good with her? Gonna be gentle?” he asks, caressing the steering wheel in a way that Sam would find creepy under any other circumstance.

Benny rolls his eyes. “’Course, Dean. I know my way ‘round ladies.”

“I’m trusting you with her,” Dean says after a moment of consideration. “Don’t let me down.”

“Are you still talking about the car?” Castiel asks from the backseat, sounding confused.

“Yes,” snorts Dean, before turning to Sam. “Hey, uh, maybe you should move to the backseat. You’ll be more comfortable there.”

“Okay,” says Sam. “And you?”

“I’ll take your place,” he says. “Wanna supervise Benny, make sure he’s as good as he says it is.”

Benny scoffs. “Real funny, Dean.”

“Wasn’t a joke,” Dean informs him as he gets out of the driver’s seat, Sam following suit a moment later.

Benny takes the driver’s side and Dean gets into the front passenger seat, while Sam shifts to the backseat behind Dean. Benny, true to his word, is gentle with Baby as he pulls her out of the gas station, and slowly Dean relaxes enough to put on some music, breaking the previously heavy silence in the car. He keeps the volume low, though, out of consideration for Sam, and for that Sam’s grateful.

“Missed this,” he murmurs.

“I know,” Dean replies, sounding infinitely fond. “Get some sleep, Sammy. I’ll wake you up at the next stop.”

“Mm,” says Sam, and leans back, closing his eyes. He’s dozing off within seconds. 

The next time he wakes up he’s somehow ended up with his head in Castiel’s lap, his body curled up in the backseat in a way that should be uncomfortable but, strangely, isn’t. Cas’s arm is draped over Sam’s shoulders, the weight of it comforting, and Sam decides that he doesn’t want to get up just yet. So he remains still, keeps his eyes closed, and listens to the sounds around him – the purr of Baby’s engine, the classic rock in the background, the bass of his brother’s voice.

“You really think they’re still gonna want me to be their leader?” Dean’s saying, his voice low but argumentative.

“Well, you didn’t do anything wrong,” Benny says. “You just punched out a bastard that really deserved it.”

“They might not see it that way,” Castiel says. “Jackson was very well-respected. People looked up to him, even more than they did to Dean. Seniority, perhaps, or maybe because Jackson’s loss was far more permanent than Dean’s.”

“That’s some weird logic,” comments Benny. “I’m damn sure everyone in there lost someone.”

“Yes, they did. But a lot of people agreed with Jackson’s ideas of revenge.”

“Fucking piece of shit,” mutters Dean vehemently.

There’s a little bit of silence. Benny’s tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. The song on the radio changes. Castiel’s arm on Sam’s shoulders moves a bit, and then settles with the tips of his fingers in Sam’s hair.

Then Dean says, voice heavy and a little wet, “I almost lost Sammy. Fuck, I would’ve, if it hadn’t been for Cas. And we lost Mom. I…” He takes a deep breath. “I don’t know what I’d have done. And for that? What I did to him, it was  _ nothing _ . He deserved far, far worse.” He sounds firm, cold – but the undercurrent of emotion is still there, and for that Sam is grateful.

“I know,” Cas says. “But Sam stopped you for a reason, Dean.”

“That piece o’ shit ain’t worth losing bits of your soul over, Dean,” Benny agrees. “Besides, what you did to him was worse than killing him. Let him sit there, and think ‘bout everything he’s done. Let it eat at him until his last breath. It’s what he deserves.”

Another silence as they all think on it. “I’m glad it’s all over,” says Castiel. His fingers are moving through Sam’s hair now, slowly lulling him back to sleep. 

“Me too,” agrees Benny.

“Yeah,” says Dean quietly. “I swear, sometimes all I wanna do is…” He trails off.

“What?” asks Benny.

“Just  _ leave _ ,” Dean says. “Just take Sam, and go somewhere no one will ever find us again. Goddammit, don’t we deserve some peace? After everything we’ve been through, everything we’ve done, everything we’ve given up – don’t we deserve some goddamn peace?”

“You deserve it more than anyone else,” Cas says quietly.

“What’s stoppin’ you from havin’ it now?” asks Benny.

Nobody speaks after that, and the question is left hanging in the air. Sam wants to think about it, he does – and there’s a  _ lot _ to think about – but he’s still so sleepy, so damn tired, and Cas’s fingers in his hair feel so nice. He feels warm, and – and safe.

He sleeps.

The next time he wakes up it’s because of the sunlight warming his face. His head is still in Cas’s lap, Cas’s arm resting over his shoulders again.

Sam feels well-rested, and anxious to get out of the car and stretch his legs. The space that felt so comfortable before when he’d been tired just feels restricting now. So he opens his eyes, and sits up slowly, letting Cas’s arm fall off him, and stretches his own arms as far above his head as they’ll go.

“Hello, Sam,” says Cas, and Sam gives him a sleepy little smile.

“Morning,” he says. “Why are we stopped?”

“Dean wanted breakfast,” Cas tells him. “Benny’s refueling. I think Dean is getting you some food too. I stayed back because I did not want to disturb you.”

“Thanks, Cas. I’ll go see Dean,” Sam says, and yawns. “Kinda need to stretch my legs.”

“I understand,” Cas says. “How are you feeling now, Sam?”

Sam considers the question. “Okay, I think,” he says in the end. “Better than before.”

“Rest does help,” says Cas.

“Yeah,” agrees Sam, and opens the door. Something occurs to him just then, and he pauses. “Do you, uh, do you want something? From the gas station?”

Castiel shakes his head. “No, thank you.” Sam waits for a second, expecting that maybe Cas will say something else, but the angel – or, well, he’s human now, remembers Sam with a pang – just goes back to examining a loose button in his trenchcoat.

Sam gives him one last smile, and then climbs out of the car, closing the door behind himself. Benny, who’s wearing a wide-brimmed hat to protect himself from the sun, looks up when he sees him, and nods at him. “Doin’ all right, Sam?” 

“Yeah,” Sam tells him. “You?”

“Eh, I’m fine,” Benny replies dismissively. “You, uh, you sleep well?”

“Surprisingly, yes,” Sam replies. “Nice gloves,” he adds, nodding down to the mitts Benny’s wearing.

“Ha, ha,” says Benny sarcastically. “Couldn’t find anything else. Bitch an’ a half, tryin’ t’ pump gas with ‘em.”

“First world vampire problems,” Sam says, and grins at the unimpressed look Benny gives him.

“Anyone ever tell you that you ain’t funny, sugar?” he asks.

“Nope,” Sam answers, and pats him on the arm on his way to where he can see Dean, browsing the candy aisle.

Dean looks up at the sound of the bell when Sam enters, and immediately makes a beeline straight for him. “Morning, sunshine,” he greets.

“Hey,” Sam answers. “Did you get, like, any sleep at all?”

Dean shrugs. “Some. Hey, peanut butter cups or Snickers?”

“Peanut butter cups,” Sam says, following Dean back into the candy aisle. “Though I’d like it if our only options weren’t junk food.”

“Hey, we’re living in a deserted wasteland now, we don’t get to be picky,” Dean tells him. “You’ll get your salad when we have a functioning form of government again.”

Sam snorts at that. “Not gonna happen for a while.”

“Maybe ever,” Dean says. It sounds casual, but Sam can see the way he tenses when he says it, as if he’s afraid it might actually be so.

“No, it’ll happen,” Sam tells him, in the same casual tone. He hands Dean a bag of Cheetos to add to his basket. “We as a species are more resilient than we give ourselves credit for.”

“True,” Dean says after a pause. He grabs a pack of peanut M&M’s. “Still. Might take a while.”

“But it’ll happen,” Sam repeats, and smiles at Dean.

“You sound really optimistic,” Dean says after a moment.

“What else have we got left?” Sam asks.

They browse the aisles in silence for a few minutes, both of them adding things to Dean’s basket every now and then. There’s no cashier – there hasn’t been anything resembling capitalism for a while now – so when they’re done they just put everything in bags directly.

Then Dean says, “I’ve actually been meaning to talk to you about something.”

“What is it?” Sam asks.

Dean bites his lower lip, hesitating. “Actually – I think it’s best if I do it with everyone here.” And with that, he grabs around half of the bags and heads out, and Sam can only take the rest and follow.

Benny’s sitting in the backseat of the Impala when they get to it, while Cas is outside, leaning against the side. They’re both talking about something or the other, but fall silent when they see Sam and Dean approaching.

“Don’t you look serious,” comments Benny.

Instead of replying, Dean just dumps his half of the bags in the backseat, and then takes the rest of the bags from Sam and does that too. “Okay,” he says, straightening. “Okay. Well. We need to talk.”

“About?” asks Castiel.

“About what we do now,” Dean says, shoving his hands into his pockets.

“I thought we were going back to base,” Cas says.

“I’m not going back there, ever,” Dean says fiercely. “I’m sick and fucking tired of that place, and I’m sick and tired of having to be responsible. I’m done with it, man.”

There’s a moment of silence, during which they all just look at Dean. Sam, for his part, can’t say he’s surprised, especially considering what Dean had admitted to Benny and Cas in the car earlier. And it seems Benny isn’t, either – he smiles slowly up at Dean, and says, “So you’ve made your decision.”

“I have,” Dean says. “Sammy?”

Sam smiles warmly at his brother. “I’ll go anywhere you take me, Dean. You know that.”

Dean looks surprised for a moment. “You’re not going to fight me on this? Nothing about civic duty or responsibility or whatever?”

Sam shakes his head. “No,” he says simply. “About time we get some peace and quiet, right?”

Dean blinks in surprise, apparently realizing Sam had heard him, and then his expression changes, lights up as he smiles. “Yeah, Sammy,” he says. “About time.”

“I would like to return, though,” Castiel says, and they both turn to him.

“Why?” Dean demands.

“I… have a role, there,” Cas says, slowly, thoughtfully. “Dean, over there I can actually  _ do _ something. I am important there.”

“You’re important to us, too, Cas,” Sam says. “You know that, right?”

“I do, Sam,” Cas says. “Thank you. But that is not what I meant.” He exhales, long and slow, appearing to choose his words carefully. “Over there, I have people relying on me. I have roles to fulfill. I am a part of something. I like that. I like feeling like I can bring change. And now, with Jackson gone, and you two leaving as well… someone must step up alongside Raniya and Alex. It would be unfair to expect them to do it all alone.”

“Does it have to be you?” Dean asks.

“Yes,” Cas replies simply. “It does. It’s what I want to do, Dean.”

“I don’t know, Cas,” Sam says. “Leaving you like this, and you’re human now… it doesn’t feel right.”

“But you are not leaving me,” Cas says. “I am choosing to stay. And I do not regret this, being human, giving up the last of my Grace.” He smiles sunnily at Sam. “It was worth it. I would do it again, without hesitation.”

“You know you’re mortal now,” Dean says quietly.

“I know,” Cas says. “I have made my peace with it.”

“You sure?” Sam asks.

Cas nods. “A hundred percent.”

Benny chooses this moment to come out of the car as well, hat back on his head and his gloved hands shoved into his pockets. “He sounds like he’s got his mind made up, brother,” he says.

“I have,” Cas confirms.

Dean looks away, closing his eyes. He looks like he’s fighting the urge to argue some more, to make Cas stay. Sam gets it, he does – there is nothing he’d like more, he thinks, than having all of his family around him, together. But he also gets that it wouldn’t be what Castiel wants. He understands wanting to feel useful, wanting to feel like he can still do something, can still make a change.

“You know you’ll always have a place with us,” he says quietly. “Always.”

“I know,” Cas repeats, and smiles again.

“You’re family,” Dean tells him, finally looking at him again. “That’s not going to change.”

Cas nods at him. “Yes,” is all he says.

They stand there awkwardly for a moment, and then Dean says, “Uh, is this the part where we hug, or—?”

“Yes,” laughs Sam, and grabs both of them, pulling them in. They embrace him back at once, and the three of them stand there for a solid minute or so, arms around each other, while Benny hovers a bit awkwardly in the background and goes largely ignored.

“Thank you,” Dean says when they part. “For, uh. Lookin’ out for me. All that time I didn’t have Sam, you kept me reasonable. Kept me from losing my shit entirely, honestly. I don’t know if I could’ve done it without you.”

“And thank you for everything you’ve done for me,” Sam adds. “For, um, not stopping searching for me. And for looking after Dean. And healing me.”

Cas smiles at both of them in turn. “Isn’t that what family does?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Dean says after a moment. “It is.” Then he asks, “So, uh, do you want us to give you a ride back, or—?”

“No, it’s fine,” Castiel says. “I know you do not want to return there. I will drive.” He gestures towards a rather sad-looking Buick parked some yards away from them. “I think that will do just fine.”

“Man, what is with you and shitmobiles,” says Dean, but he’s grinning fondly.

“You know what, I’ll go with you,” Benny says, and they all turn to look at him. “What?” he says in response. “Ain’t like I can just tag along with Sam and Dean. Not a huge fan of third-wheelin’. Don’t look at me like that, you know it’s true,” he adds when he sees the look on Dean’s face.

“What will you do?” Sam asks him.

Benny shrugs. “I’ll figure somethin’ out. Who says I gotta go back to camp? Maybe I’ll go off on my own, see if I can find a nest or somethin’, I dunno. I’ll figure it out. Mind if I join you, Wings?”

“I no longer have wings,” Castiel says. “And no, I do not mind.”

“That should make for an interesting road trip,” comments Sam with a grin.

“Can’t be any worse’n Purgatory,” Benny says. “So, that’s it, huh? End o’ the road.”

“End of the road,” confirms Dean, taking a step forward to hug Benny. They do their customary manly shoulder clapping before stepping away. “You take care, Benny.”

“You too, brother,” Benny tells him. The epithet no longer stings Sam like it once did, back when both him and Dean had been so insecure about their places in each other’s lives. It’s different now. Now there’s no doubt in either of their minds about what they mean to each other.

“Sam,” Benny says, and his eyes crinkle when he smiles at him, just before wrapping his arms around him. “You look after yourself, y’hear. Stay outta trouble.”

“You know me,” Sam says, hugging him back. “I always do.”

Benny snorts, and then squeezes Sam’s shoulders before letting go of him. “And you look after your brother.”

“I will,” both Sam and Dean say at the same time, and then grin.

Benny puts his gloved hands back into his pockets. “Somehow I get the feelin’ this ain’t the last we’ll be seeing of each other,” he comments wryly.

“Better not be,” Dean says.

“Shit, I ain’t no good at sayin’ goodbye,” Benny says. “So – I’ll see you two later, I guess.”

“See you later,” echoes Sam. “And Benny? You’re not so bad after all.”

Benny grins. “That’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me, sugar.”

“Sugar?” repeats Dean, frowning.

“Don’t ask, it’s a thing,” Sam mutters, grimacing.

“Um, Benny,” says Cas, looking a little awkward, as if afraid of interrupting. “Will you please hotwire the car for me?”

“Yeah, okay, but you drive first,” Benny tells him. “I’m dead tired.”

“It’s a deal,” replies Cas.

“Take some food with you,” Sam tells Cas.

“I will,” Cas answers.

They drive away not soon after, Castiel in the driver’s seat and Benny stretched out in the backseat, hat over his face. Sam and Dean watch them go, standing side by side leaning against the Impala. For a few moments it’s quiet, both of them lost in their own thoughts, and then Dean turns to Sam, and says, “You know what, Sammy?”

“What?” Sam asks.

Dean grins, straightening, and begins walking round to the driver’s side. “I could really use a beer right now.”

Sam laughs. “And where are you going to find one?”

Dean shrugs, opening the door. Sam opens the one on the passenger side and slides in just as Dean does, and they both close the doors at the same time, in sync, the way they have always been and always will be.

“I don’t know, Sammy,” he says. This time when he turns to smile at his brother, it reaches his eyes, makes them light up bright and beautiful, and every part of Sam is wired to respond to him when he’s like that, to smile back the same. “But I’m willing to drive around till we find out. You in?”

“Always,” Sam tells him.

“Great,” says Dean, and leans in to open the glove compartment and hand Sam a map. “Pick a place, Sammy,” he says, closing the glove compartment and returning to his seat so he can start the car.

“What place?” Sam asks him, unfolding the map.

He shrugs again. “Anywhere you wanna go, Sammy. Anywhere at all. Whole world’s ours now, kid. We can do anything we want, be anyone we want to be. All you gotta do is pick a place.”

So Sam does.

**Author's Note:**

> good? bad? please let me know what you thought of it in the comments! 
> 
> love,  
> remy x


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